Life, By The Numbers
by Delilah's Soliloquy
Summary: When she thinks about her life, Wiress sees the numbers. They stand for more than anyone else could possibly understand. A series of vignettes from an extraordinary life. Rating is for episodes of violence in later chapters-hey, it's the Hunger Games.
1. 5:29

_Hi, everyone! Well, as I mentioned in the AN to _Blackbird_, I owe Wiress and Beetee a happy stroy. This collection of vignettes isn't always happy, but it isn't always sad, either-kind of like life. Either way, it's a start. _

_As the story summary mentions, this is a story formed around numbers-specifically, numbers that have significance to Wiress, that pop into mind when she thinks back over her life. They're arranged in generally-sequential order, and you'll notice that Wiress' POV tends to change and grow and mature (hopefully) a bit as she grows older. She may contradict herself at times, because she's come to change her mind. Don't blame her; I think we're all guilty of that from time to time._

_Disclaimer time: I am not Suzanne Collins and I own precisely nothing. _

* * *

5:29

_Five twenty-nine_. That's the time at which I am born. 5:29 PM, just in time for dinner, my mother always said. She's taking her lunch at the factory when her pains start and, expecting a twenty-four hour labor like the one she'd had with my sister, she calmly finishes her lunch, washes her hands and heads back to her work station.

"What do you think you're doing?" one of her friends asks in disbelief. My mother looks up from her work, nonplussed.

"I've got hours to go yet before the baby comes. I can still get the full day's pay…"

One of the other women working nearby on the assembly floor snorts back laughter. "That's what _you _think, honey," she chuckles. She is older than my mother and has four children of her own, all of whom are already of reaping age. "The first one might take forever, but the second one's out before you know it. You'd better get home fast, or else that baby'll be born right here on the factory floor."

My mother looks around at the other women in the crowd in disbelief. Every single one of them who has children of her own nods in support of the older woman's claims. Without a word, my mother unknots her worker's kerchief, marches straight up to the foreman, and informs him in a low, level voice that she is going home.

"What!? You're still on the clock for…five hours," replies the foreman, wiping his forehead with a grubby handkerchief and checking his watch so that he can accurately inform my mother of exactly how much time she'll be subject to his command.

"I'm going home," my mother repeats, without raising her voice a single decibel. "I'm in labor. Either I go home, or I give birth in the factory. Imagine the effect it would have on production rates! It's your choice."

And, without waiting for his response, she turns around and heads straight out the door, leaving the kerchief in a bunched-up wad at her workstation.

My mother walks through the streets silently, slightly hunched over, her big belly preceding her as she turns corners. It's the middle of the day; the children are all in school and the vast majority of the adults are at work, so the streets are fairly empty. Every now and then she passes someone going about their shopping, or a stern-faced Peacekeeper on patrol, but not once does she stop to speak to anyone. She turns up a narrow alley and emerges between two tall, identical buildings, their brick facades permanently stained with soot. Into the dim, shabby tile vestibule, then up one, two, three flights of narrow stairs. Apartment 3F. She fumbles in her pockets for her keys, rattles them in the locks, then swings the door shut behind her and lowers herself into an old wooden chair at the kitchen table. Nearby, my sister is scribbling on some old scraps of paper under the supervision of Silica, an elderly neighbor from 3A.

"Mommy!" my sister cries, looking up from her masterpiece in surprise. "Goodness, what are you doing home? I didn't expect you for hours," adds Silica, taken completely aback by my mother's sudden appearance. "Is it the baby?" she asks, eyeing my mother's drained expression and the hand lying protectively over her belly. My mother nods in reply, tilting her head back.

* * *

After five hours of labor, I am born. 18 inches long and about 5½ pounds. Big, wide eyes and dark hair. My mother is so pleased to see that I have blue eyes, like _her_ mother had had—blue eyes are prized as a mark of beauty in our district—and she completely ignores everyone who told her that many babies are born with blue eyes, but that they darken over time. My mother gets her wish, and my eyes stay blue.

My grandmother had been famous for her beauty when she was young. I wouldn't know firsthand, because I've never met her, but old people in the district—especially the old men—always talk about her with a reminiscent smile, and wax poetically on her beautiful blue eyes, shiny black curls and creamy porcelain skin. Silica had known her in passing, and when she used to look after my sister and me (and later, our brother as well), she would sometimes tell us about her—a girl so beautiful that, amid the dull, uniform gray that is District 3, she seemed to glow.

My mother didn't inherit her beauty. She is nice-looking, but _nothing_ compared to the legend her mother had been. Still, she sees my blue eyes and is filled with hope that just maybe, this new daughter of hers would perhaps be a celebrated beauty like her mother had once been. I think I'm destined to disappoint in that capacity.

I am born on a Wednesday evening, and from the start, the superstitious old ladies of the district who make their way into our apartment to assist my mother after the birth cluck their tongues and shake their heads in sympathy. One pats my mother on the arm. "'Wednesday's child is full of woe,'" she recites, apparently deciding that some old wives' tale from a million years ago should be taken as the gospel truth in predicting the direction my life will take. If so, then at the tender age of one day old, tragedy is ordained in my future. My mother, thankfully, ignores this comment.

"She's so beautiful," she breathes, looking down on me as the woman from the apothecary shop mixes up some kind of herbal tea for her. "My beautiful, blue-eyed girl."

This is a matter of opinion. My big sister wrinkles her nose and stares down at the tiny bundle in our mother's arms that is me with an uncommitted expression on her face. "She's kind of wrinkly," she says in distaste. "And kind of reddish, too."

"All babies look like that when they're first born, Electra," replies my father gently. "You did, too, when you were that little."

Electra shakes her head in disbelief. She's four years old and completely convinced that she's right about everything. But within an hour or two, she's already leaning over me, watching my fingers curl around hers, her long curly hair tickling my cheek.

"She's so little," she breathes, gazing back up at my mother, who's beaming on her two little daughters. "And she's holding my hand."

"She already loves her big sister," my mother replies. "You'll help me take care of her, right, Electra? Take care of your baby sister?"

Electra leans down and, very gently, kisses my forehead. I stir in my sleep as she whispers, "I'll always take care of her, Mommy."

* * *

_Well, there you have it! Into the world and into our story, all in one day. I'll be back tomorrow (I hope) with the next chapter. In the meantime-review! Tell me what you liked. Tell me what you disliked, for that matter. Tell me what you ate for lunch, if that's your style. Or simply just pop in to say hello. Either way, I'd love to hear from you._

_Until then,_

_Delilah_


	2. Six

_I'm back, with the next installment of_ Numbers_. This chapter's a bit longer and covers a surprising amount of ground, all coming back to the number 6._

_But first, some business:_

_Firstly, I'd love to thank Chapter 1's reviewers,_ KTstoriesandstuff_ and_ Pinkbookworm7. _Reading your reviews made me so happy! I'd usually PM my thanks, but I stupidly deleted the review emails from my inbox and wasn't at my computer yesterday. It gives me something to remember for next time._

_Secondly, the disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_...though as of next week, I finally own my car, after several long years!_

_In response to a reviewer's question, the narration in these chapters (especially the early ones) is kind of atemporal. I figure you can't narrate your own life before you can speak, so it's hard to do first-person narration for a small child. However, the later chapters worked so well in first person narration that I applied it to the whole story. All in all, the narration exists outside of a specific place or time. We can assume that Wiress is looking back on these episodes, piecing her narration together with her own recollections as well as the details she picked up from others who were there and perhaps even a little embellishment, for poetic reasons. She may not even be narrating each chapter at the same point in her life. One chapter, later on, will not be narrated by her at all, but more about that later. In the meantime, enjoy._

_One last thing-this chapter and the next chapter overlap somewhat in timing. They can technically be read in either order. I have a couple of reasons why I put this one first, but switching them won't hurt the arc of the narrative._

* * *

Six

The number six figures prominently in my childhood.

Six is the number of letters in the name they give me. Wiress. A good, strong District Three name.

My name is pretty run-of-the-mill; I'm not the only Wiress in the district, and I won't be the last. My name, like everything else about me, is nothing that really stands out in a crowd. Because that's how to survive in Panem: by keeping your head down and blending in with the crowd. To stand out is to stand alone, when everyone knows that safety lies in numbers.

My parents know this. They teach us from a young age not to stand out, not to say or do anything that might attract the wrong kind of attention. It turns out the list of things that could attract the wrong kind of attention is nearly endless. I'm six years old the day my mother drives this lesson home for me. We're standing at a stall in the public market on a breezy spring afternoon. My mother's buying bread and Electra and I are taking turns begging her for a surprise—ribbons, maybe, or even the impossible luxury of a piece of fruit to share. This last idea seems almost too good to be true; fruit has to be imported all the way from District 11, so it's prohibitively expensive.

"Not _now_, girls," she says through gritted teeth, rummaging in her change purse for a few coins to give the baker.

"How many rolls was that, then?" he asks my mother, piling the little square rolls on the counter.

"How much was it for ten—_what_, Electra? _What_ is it?"

"That's only two each!" my sister pouts. I nod my head in disgruntled agreement.

"And your point is?"

"They're so _small_," I add, pointing out what should be blatantly obvious to everyone involved. An ominous crease appears between my mother's eyebrows; it's clear she's getting annoyed, but we foolishly press on.

"We don't have enough money for three each," she says in a low voice, leaning in towards us so the baker won't hear this embarrassing confession.

"It's not fair!" whines Electra, much to my mother's consternation. "How come _he_ has enough money to buy as many rolls as he wants?" I add mutinously, pointing to the customer who's taken our place in line. It's Marcellus, one of our local Peacekeepers, and he's placing a big order that drives all thoughts of my mother and her ten paltry rolls from the baker's head.

My mother looks over her shoulder, realizes who I'm pointing to, and promptly slaps me right across the face. I stare at her, dumbstruck. I feel shock at first, shock at what my mother's done; then a slow, smarting pain starts to creep across my cheek where her hand made contact. My mother fails to acknowledge this, though. Abandoning her rolls on the counter before she can even pay, she grabs my sister and me painfully by the arm and marches us up the street without a word. She doesn't speak to either of us until we're back home in our kitchen and she's locked the door behind us.

"_Are—you—crazy_?" she hisses, sounding less like our mother than some sort of nightmarish, child-eating monster. Electra and I, too frightened to be sullen and stubborn, exchange wide-eyed glances.

"How _dare_ you say something so stupid in front of a _Peacekeeper_!" Mother continues, and she raises her hand again, but this time we draw away in fear.

"Please—we didn't _mean_ to; we won't do it again!" Electra apologizes rapidly, as I nod fervently behind her. Our mother never really hits us, so we're both shocked and upset by the afternoon's turn of events. My mother lowers her hand, sighs and when she speaks at last, she sounds tense, but a great deal calmer.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to complain in front of the Peacekeepers?" she asks wearily. "You need to be more careful. You need to keep things like that quiet."

"We were just hungry," I say in the smallest, least threatening voice I can muster. "We just wanted more rolls."

My mother sits in silence for a moment, clearly thinking deeply, choosing her words with care. Finally, she takes us gently by the shoulders and turns us to face her. Her face is set with purposeful determination. "When you walk out the door of this house," she begins carefully, "you need to do your job to protect this family. Part of protecting this family is always showing how good things are here, and how you have everything you need. Because if you're foolish enough to let the Peacekeepers think you're unhappy with the way things are…well, then they'll give you a _real _reason to be unhappy."

"But it still isn't _fair_," supplies Electra matter-of-factly. My mother takes her hand, her face inexplicably sad. "No, it's not," she agrees, "but when did anyone ever tell you that life was fair?"

* * *

Our home is as typical of District Three as you can possibly get. We live in a little apartment on the third floor of a brick building that looks _exactly_ like all the other brick buildings on our block. We have four rooms: a kitchen that doubles as living room, a bedroom for my parents, a bedroom for us kids and a tiny little bathroom with no windows at all. This last bit, about the windows, matters very little, though, because the windows we _do_ have—one in our bedroom, one in my parents' and two in the main room—are so caked with grime and soot that you can scarcely see out, and when my mother _does_ manage to get them reasonably clean, you're greeted with the thoroughly uninspiring view of a brick wall.

No matter what time of the day it is, our apartment nearly always seems too crowded. In the morning, our elbows touch at the kitchen table as we eat a quick breakfast before heading out to school and work. My mother's chair is so close to the stove that she could actually cook while sitting down at the table, if she chose to do so. In our bedroom, Electra and I share a bed, while Bolton's bed on the opposite wall is so close that if I were to stand on the bottom edge of my bed, I could easily step across to stand on his, even with my short little-girl legs.

The hardest part was that, even though we grew, our apartment stayed the same size. It seemed almost too small to accommodate five, so maybe that's why we were all so bemused to learn, years later, that it was once mean to house six…

* * *

At seven years old, I took great pride in being the first one who noticed the details. So it's a little sobering when Electra spots the changes in Mother before I do.

"Does Mother seem…different, to you?" she asks me one night, once the lights are out and we're lying, side-by-side in bed. We've just had our baths and we smell like soap. Electra's face is shadowy in the dark, and somewhat older-looking than her eleven years.

"Different how?" I ask. In a way, I'm biding for time; giving myself an opportunity to run over every encounter I've had with my mother today. Does anything stand out as being unusual?

"She was singing today when she made dinner," Electra whispers, casting a quick glance across the room at Bolton to make sure he's asleep. Bolton can't keep a secret to save his life.

"So? She always sings when she works."

"No, Wiress, that's _you_. I haven't heard Mother sing in a while. Not since there was that big thunderstorm and Bolton started screaming and she sang him the song about the lighting and the thunder…"

I think about this for a minute. She's right, Mother hasn't sung in a while…at least, not until recently. This prompts another startling realization.

"She's smiling a lot more, too," I add, matching Electra's low, confidential tone, eager to be sharing secrets now that she's shown that she's not too old to share secrets with her little sister. "It's a different smile than usual. It reminds me of the color yellow."

Electra snorts. "_The color yellow_? Sometimes, I wonder where we got you from, Wiress. 'The color yellow,' _really_…"

* * *

Our mother keeps smiling her new smile. She keeps singing. She writes little notes and packs them in our lunches and somehow, reading them makes up for the limited quality of the food. This goes on for a few weeks, a couple of months…then, as suddenly as it all began, it was over.

I sense something's different the minute I walk into the apartment. It's very quiet, except for a strange, low sound coming from one of the back rooms. This isn't right; no one should be home right now. Bolton's at a friend's house until six and Electra and I are supposed to stay in the apartment and start our homework until our parents get home. I turn and look up at Electra, who cocks her head to the side to listen, then looks alarmed.

"Stay back, Wiress," she says, lowering her schoolbag to the floor and stepping protectively in front of me.

"What is it?" My curiosity is doing battle in my head with my fear of a possible intruder.

"Shh! Take your shoes off. Don't want whoever it is to hear us," she mutters as she loosens the straps on her worn school shoes and slips them off by the door before helping me with mine. It's a mark of how anxious she is that she declines to mention that my knee socks are now drooping around my ankles; she's forever reminding me to pull them up.

Like two cats on a back fence, we tiptoe noiselessly through the apartment. The sound has a muffled quality to it, almost restrained, but it gets louder as we grow closer.

"It's coming from in there," I say in an undertone, pointing to the door of our parents' room, which has been left slightly ajar.

Terrified of what we might be faced with, we creep forward and peer through the crack in the door.

Our mother, who should be at work right now, is curled up on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, like Bolton during a thunderstorm. She's not wearing her work clothes. Her face is buried out of sight in her pillow, but from the shuddering of her shoulders and the soft sound of sobs, we can tell that she's crying.

Electra steps back from the door to face me. Her eyes meet mine and we know we're thinking the same thing: that we don't want mother to know we saw her crying. Putting a finger to her lips, Electra beckons for me to follow her. We steal through the front room, pick up our shoes, carry them out to the hallway and close the apartment door inaudibly behind us. Sitting on the landing between the second and third floors, we put our shoes back on and Electra fixes my socks like I knew she would. Then, figuring we've given our mother enough time to pull herself together, we tramp noisily up the stairs, rattling Electra's keys in the locks with as much noise as possible, then loudly drop our schoolbags by the door and draw up chairs at the kitchen table, discussing school much more noisily than we'd normally do.

Our mother emerges from the bathroom fifteen minutes later. She's paler than usual, but other than that, you can't tell that she'd been crying. We feign surprise at seeing her home so early; she smiles a sad little smile and claims she'd been sent home sick. We never mention how we found her weeping disconsolately like an orphaned child, and she never tells us how an electrical accident at work caused her to lose the baby she'd been carrying, our little brother or sister. We find this out much later, from our father, when the apartment that should've been home to six of us was reduced to house four.

* * *

_Lots of sixes...perhaps I should play the number..._

_Well, I'd love to hear what you think of this latest update. Our next chapter provides more background information and a little less narrative, but it fills in some of the gaps, I hope. Tune in tomorrow to find out what I mean._

_Fun bit of trivia: I grew up in an apartment where the windows looked out onto a solid brick wall, very much like Wiress' family has in this chapter. Ours was a bit bigger, but my parents had 5 kids..._

_Yours,_

_Delilah_


	3. Three

_Good morning, everyone! We continue our tale with Chapter Three, which is-ironically-called 'Three'. Now, as I said yesterday, this chapter and Chapter 2 can actually be taken in either order. This one isn't very plot-heavy, unfortunately, but it does give some good character information, I think. Don't worry, plot lovers, tomorrow's update will fulfill your plot withdrawal!_

_Thanks go out to Pinkbookworm7, who reviewed Chapter 2. _

_As usual, I own nothing._

* * *

Three

_Three_ is the number of children in my family.

Electra, my sister, is the oldest. Four years old when I'm born, Electra is my opposite in many ways. She is outgoing and talkative and always knows the exact right thing to say in any situation. She looks very much like our mother, with brown eyes and long, curly black hair that's the one thing both she and our mother inherited from my grandmother.

My mother is the oldest in her family and my father's an only child, so Electra was the first baby born in our family in many years. I'm told the relatives all fussed over her a lot when she was born. Not so with me—not that they don't love me, because they do, but a second daughter's just not a big deal. After four years, the novelty had worn off.

Electra is the kind of person who feels most at home when she's taking care of others. From the beginning, she was always our mother's best helper. She'd never turn down a chance to watch after Bolton and me, or to run next door to borrow a cup of flour, or to stir a pot of something on the stove while our mother ran down to the market. She mothers Bolton and me every bit as much as our actual mother does, and never hesitates to tell us when his shirt's untucked or when my braids are messy. Sometimes, we resent her for this—for being older and so grown-up that her shirt always stays tucked in and her hair never looks out of place.

Electra studies hard for her grades. She sits under the one light in our room with her books and studies and studies because making our parents proud is something of an obsession with Electra. When they come home tired from work, she promises them that someday, she'll get a fancy job where she'll be so rich, they won't have to work anymore at all. Really, the only people I know of who have that kind of money are the mayor and Hunger Games victors. Maybe Peacekeepers, too; I wouldn't know for certain. Seeing as Electra can't be a Peacekeeper, this means that she either plans to become mayor of District 3 someday, or she plans to kill twenty-three kids in the Hunger Games so she can fulfill her promise to my parents and become so rich she can support them.

* * *

Bolton, our little brother and the only boy, is three years younger than me. When he was born, Electra and I were so enamored of him, this little ball of blankets that was our brother, that we got scolded more than once for not leaving him to nap in peace. She was seven and I was three, and a new baby was so much more exciting than anything else we could scrounge up to play with, so it wasn't entirely our fault.

My mother calls Bolton a 'live wire.' He's always in motion—running, jumping, spinning, waving, playing. My father says that if we could somehow tap into the mysterious source of energy that powers Bolton, District 3 could replace District 5 as the powerhouse of Panem.

There are times that he slows down, though. Usually, this is at night, when he sleeps. He always falls asleep the second his head hits the pillow and Electra and I are always awake to hear his slow, even breathing from across the room, letting everyone know that he's fast asleep and quiet at last. His endless motion stops when it's stormy out, too, because Bolton is absolutely petrified of thunderstorms. He cowers under the covers in his bed like a frightened animal, whimpering pitifully until my mother manages to coax him out. He then switches to cowering in her lap, his arms wrapped so tightly around her neck that we're all afraid he might strangle her by accident, all while she croons lullabies to him.

Bolton would never admit this, though, because he likes to think of himself as being fearless. When we walk to school together, he insists on walking on the outside of the sidewalk, closest to the street, in the event he'd have to defend us—his older sisters—from bullies or criminals or Peacekeepers looking for district kids to push around. At first, we try to point out to him that this is absolutely ludicrous—Electra's a full seven years older than him!—but he insists and we learn with time that it's just easier to go along with it to make him happy. This chivalrous streak never abandons him, and as the years go by, he eventually grows into a strong-looking boy who actually looks capable of defending his sisters' honor, should the opportunity present itself.

Bolton's easy charm and good nature are apparent from day one. He's a happy baby who puts up with all Electra's and my patting and squeezing and kissing without squirming or wailing for our mother to shoo us away. Out of the three of us, he's the one with the big smiles and the infectious laugh. He's the one the neighbors remember.

* * *

I am not as responsible as Electra. I don't remember to put the dishes away after breakfast before we go to school; I forget my keys at home at least once a week and have to rely on her to remember hers. I don't study like Electra does, yet I get good grades; better, even. This annoys Electra to no end and she's constantly complaining when she thinks I'm not listening about how Wiress never studies and still gets better marks than she does after hours and hours of studying. She whines that it's not fair and I privately agree.

I'm not affable like Bolton. I'm the shy one out of the three of us. Whenever we meet someone new, Bolton warms to them instantly as though they were lifelong friends; Electra introduces herself with a slow smile that's very sweet, her face gradually lighting up like water being brought to a boil. I, however, shelter beside my mother, look up at the stranger with big, round, curious eyes and answer in short, flustered sentences.

If you ask our neighbors, our family friends, my teachers, they'll say I'm quiet and sweet; very smart but maybe a little odd.

"I don't know where she gets her answers from sometimes," my teacher confesses to my parents. "Her reasoning is sound, but…it's just different. Different from any other student I've ever seen. She sees things in a unique way."

"Wiress, why are you smiling?" our neighbor from apartment 3D asks as she spots me sitting on the front steps of our building one day.

"Today feels special," I reply, leaning back slightly to see if I can feel the sun on my face.

"Special? Why?"

"I'm not sure," I begin, trying to find words to describe the sensation. "It feels like warm rolls fresh from the baker's, and crisp like one of those fruits my dad brought home last fall for the Harvest Festival."

"An apple?"

"Yeah, that's it!" I reply energetically. Fresh and crisp. Like rolls and apples. The neighbor lady smiles strangely, pats me on the head and walks away, leaving me deep in thoughts of soft rolls and the sweet tang of an apple beneath its delicate skin.

* * *

Responsible. Smart. Charming. Electra once joked that, if my parents were to combine the three of us into one person, they'd have the perfect child.

"Look," she insisted over dinner amid protests from my mother and gales of laughter from my father, "just take my maturity and my perseverance and my hair—because we all know who got the good hair—and take Wiress' brains and her blue eyes and maybe her singing voice and that shy thing she does with her eyes that everyone seems to think is so precious, and then add Bolton's personality and maybe his freckles and you've got the world's most perfect child." She looked around the table in triumph, daring any of us to question the logic of her argument.

"Maybe so," my mother finally conceded, causing Bolton to start choking on his dinner and me to whack him forcefully on the back. "Lucky for you, your father and I wouldn't know what to do with a perfect child, so we opted for three almost-perfect children instead. Three's our lucky number."

* * *

_Well, I hope you enjoyed this bit or character-building and are looking forward to tomorrow's update! While you're waiting for it, please review! I really do enjoy reading your feedback._

_Until then, I'm off to but a birthday present for my mother-in-law. _

_All the best,_

_Delilah_


	4. Eight

_Good morning, readers! Thanks to last chapter's two reviewers and I'm glad to see you're enjoying the story. This chapter is another sad one, but I promise the next one isn't._

_In response to a comment in one of my recent reviews, my brother suggested I make Wiress one of those infuriating kids who never studies but gets good grades. I was one of those kids, too, so he might've been displacing a little resentment there..but understandably so._

* * *

Eight

I'm eight years old when my mother gets sick.

It's a bad winter that year. The wind rattles the windowpanes. I hold hands with Electra and Bolton as we walk to school, because the wind is so strong and fierce that one powerful gust could blow us over easily. We make our way through swirling snow and dull, gray sleet, heads bowed against the gale—a chain of cowering children. The blind leading the blind.

The pavement ices over quickly, and whatever ice manages to melt during the day simply re-freezes at night, when the temperatures drop cruelly. The flakes come down pure and white but somehow end up dull and gray by the time they hit the ground. We skid and slip and slide as we walk to school, when my parents walk to work, when Electra drops the two of us at home and then makes her way over to the factory where she does a four-hour shift until dinner. She is only twelve years old.

Many people get sick that winter. Old Silica down the hall can't leave her apartment anymore, so my brother and I go to the market for her, until her son comes one day and takes her away. She goes to live with him and his wife, because that way, there'll always be someone around to look after her. I never get the chance to protest that this is exactly what my brother and I were doing.

* * *

My mother had never been strong. After all those years of working in the factory, breathing in smog and fumes, her lungs had grown weak. It isn't uncommon in District 3, but medicine for breathing problems is so expensive that only really rich people can afford it.

It doesn't take long for the pneumonia to claim her.

It started out with the coughing. We didn't pay it any mind, because like I said, my mother already had breathing problems. Most people do around here, to one degree or another. By the time I'm seven, I'm showing the symptoms, too. But then, it started to keep her up at night. She'd head off to work in the morning with her clothes hanging more loosely on her body, purple shadows under her dull eyes. She got tired easily; even a short walk down the stairs winded her.

Soon it's Electra who's cooking dinner at night, because my mother is too weak to stand at the stove. She can't go to work; she can't even make it down the stairs to the street. My father starts working double shifts at the factory to make up for her lost wages and finally, my mother is confined to her bed, burning with fever. We sit with her when we came home from school, Bolton and I. We sit beside her and tell her about what we learned in school, and she smiles weakly at us and ruffles our hair.

"I made a picture today! It was of our house, and I drew our family and wrote our names on it. I wrote all the letters all by myself!" Bolton pulls out a slightly-crumpled drawing, on thick, grayish paper. My mother takes it in her bony, wasted hand and beams at Bolton like it's a priceless masterpiece, even though his 'B' is backwards and he's spelled my name wrong.

"It's beautiful," Mother whispers, before turning to me. "And how about you, Wiress? What did you learn today?"

I tear my eyes away from Bolton's picture, which shows my parents healthy and smiling and me and Electra, hand-in-hand, with red ribbons in our hair. I've never had a red hair ribbon of my own before.

"We learned about voice modlation…"

"_Modulation_, sweetheart."

"Yeah, that. And I got a hundred on my spelling test."

Mother smiles again. "That's my smart girl," she coos, pulling me in close for a hug. She smells like that thick paste that she used to rub on our chests when we were sick. It's a weird sort of smell—I can't describe it well enough, but it makes me think of plants. She lets go of me quickly, though, because she's seized by another coughing fit.

We're worried about Mother, but no more so than usual, and none of us can predict how fast she declines.

* * *

It's a Tuesday in February—as dreary and dull as the entire winter's been, with no end to the wind and sleet in sight. Electra's pulling Bolton in her wake as we trudge home. She's muttering darkly to herself, annoyed because she's going to be late for work and the foreman will dock her pay. We had been halfway home when Bolton remembered that he'd left his schoolbag at school, and while he doesn't get much in the way of homework yet, we know that our parents can't spare the money for a new schoolbag for him. So we have no choice but to turn around and track down his schoolbag. By the time we're heading through the alley between our building and the one next door, Electra is already twenty minutes late for her shift and in a dangerous mood.

She jiggles the key in the lock, wrenches the door open and prepares to close it on us and head straight back down into the streets when she freezes. Our father is standing in the doorway, even though he should still be at work until long after we're asleep in bed.

"F—Father?" asks Electra. Her voice sounds very different than it had just a moment ago, when she'd been barking orders at us all the way up the stairs. It sounds small, the voice of a girl scared to death, a girl who wants to shrink until she's even smaller than her defeated squeak of a voice, small enough to hide in a mouse hole. I know this because it's exactly how I feel. My father has a strange look on his face—vacant, his eyes oddly glassy like someone sick with fever. At first, I think that maybe he's sick, too, and that we'll have to leave school to take care of our parents until the money runs out and they drag us off to the community home. There's a boy who lives in the community home who sits two seats over from me in class. He jumps when our teacher raises her voice and winces whenever she comes too close.

"It's your mother," Father says simply, shaking his head slowly. "You should—you should go to her." He steps aside to let us in without reminding us to take off our boots. This, more than anything, is what convinces me that something is very wrong. My mother would kill us for tracking muddy slush into her house.

My mother is lying in bed, as usual. At first glance, it looks like nothing has changed. The air in the apartment is still stale with sickness; the bedside table heaped with medicines we'd bought or bartered for or begged from neighbors. The apothecary is sitting at the kitchen table, gazing down into the depths of a cup of thin tea. She looks defeated.

Mother's eyes are barely open, but she raises an arm weakly and beckons to us. We approach cautiously, afraid to come too close, as if we could break her fragile body just by touching her. Electra spies a cloth on the bedside table and holds it under the tap. The pipes are still frozen, to some degree, so it's a while before the dull, slightly brownish water starts to flow. In the meantime, I lower myself carefully onto the edge of the bed.

"_There's_ my beautiful girl," Mother sighs, and I have to lean in to hear her, her voice is so faint. I feel my eyes welling up even though I'm a big girl now and I don't want Bolton to see me crying and get upset. But no one ever calls me 'beautiful girl' but Mother, and when she's gone I'll never hear it again.

"I—I built a new model t-today," I say, my voice betraying me with every quaver as I struggle to talk about something exceedingly ordinary and thus bring a little normalcy into what is fast devolving into a nightmare. She smiles, a faint little smile that breaks my heart. "A model? Ah, my little engineer, are you?" my mother replies fondly. She takes my hand in hers. It's cold, so cold that I want to pull my gloves out of my coat pocket and put them on my mother's hands.

Electra bustles over with the damp cloth and sits on the other side of the bed, mopping my mother's forehead. Beside me, Bolton is weeping. His nose is running and he's hiccupping as he sobs. I'm not sure how much he understands about what's happening but he's intuitive enough to sense that something's very wrong. Mother reaches up and rests her hand on my head, stroking my hair gently. She knows that nothing comforts me more than this simple touch. "Promise me you'll look after each other," she gasps, before a fit of coughing overcomes her. "Promise me…promise…"

"I'll take care of them," my sister whispers, leaning in to rest her head next to Mother's. "I promise, I'll watch after Wiress and Bolton."

"I never…I didn't…" More coughing. Each round of coughing takes away more of my mother with it, but she's hanging on to life with both hands, desperate to get this last message across.

"I never wanted you to…to take…tesserae," she chokes out, and I squeeze her hand tighter because I can't think of anything to say to make it all better. Electra is twelve already. In a few months, she'll be at her first reaping. If Mother were well this winter and everything was like it was supposed to be, we'd scrape by and only one of the papers in the big glass ball would have Electra's name on it. One in hundreds, maybe thousands. I don't know what the chances are, but they'll be a lot more in a week or so, when Electra brings home the first tessera rations she's earned in exchange for a few more shots at death in the Hunger Games.

"Don't worry about us," Electra chokes out. "We'll be…"

Mother starts coughing again, great big coughs that rack her whole body. I give up entirely; I can't be strong anymore. I bury my face in the worn shoulder of her nightgown where she can't see my tears and I can feel her chest shuddering as she gasps "I love…"

"I love you, too," I whisper into her shoulder, but I never know if she hears me.

I hear the sobs escalating around me just as the snow starts to fall again outside the window, and I know instinctively that my mother is gone.

* * *

_Well, even though this one was sad, I hope you enjoyed it and will tell me all about your thoughts in your review. IIf you don't care to share to many thoughts, then fill up the blank space telling me about yourself, or the weather. I want to hear from you! 'll be back tomorrow with the next chapter, in which nobody dies! Yay!_

_Delilah_


	5. Sixteen

_Hello, readers! Don't worry, no one dies in today's update, so I hope it'll lighten the atmosphere...for a change._

_As usual, thanks to my reviewers._

_And also as usual: I don't own anything._

* * *

Sixteen

_Sixteen_ is when I get my first kiss. It's brief and rather unexpected, just me and the boy who'd sat behind me in class for the past two years. It doesn't count for much, but two years later I'm grateful that I'd at least experienced it before it was too late.

His name is Joey and he sits behind me in school. For the past two years, he's been sitting behind me, and at first I shrug it off and figure it's just a weird coincidence.

"No way," says my friend Alexandra at lunch when I mention the weird coincidence. "He _likes_ you."

So now, instead of simply having a boy who likes sitting behind me, I have a boy who apparently likes _me_. It's strange and new and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, or whether I even _need_ to do something about it.

On the outside, nothing has changed. I still come to class every day; I still take notes and answer questions. On the inside, though, I'm a wreck. _Does_ he like me? Do I like him back? What should I say to him? And what will I do if he rejects me? On and on and on, until I wonder how I'm learning anything in class at all if I'm wondering about Joey's state of mind all day.

One day, I forget my pen. It really is an accident, as I insist later to Alexandra when she's complimenting me on my clever ruse. But I turn around and ask him to borrow one and our eyes meet over his notebook. His are brown, like most of the people in our district, but that doesn't stop them from being really pretty. Do I tell him this? No. What boy wants to be told that his eyes are pretty?

"Thanks," I say rather breathlessly, which is stupid because I haven't been climbing the stairs or running or training illegally for the Hunger Games, so there's absolutely no reason in the world why I should be out of breath.

"You're welcome," he answers back, and I turn back to face front, half relieved that I didn't manage to start a real conversation with him and half disappointed.

When the bell rings for lunch, I pack up my books hurriedly and am about to head for the door when I remember his pen, which I'd thrown absentmindedly in my bag. I turn back around to see that he hasn't even finished gathering his things yet. He certainly moves slowly.

"I'm sorry," I stammer, rummaging in my bag for his pen. "I completely forgot this was yours…wait a second, think I've got it…"

He stands there, watching me, probably thinking I'm the world's most careless person, and the stupid pen is _not_ making an appearance any time soon, much to my consternation.

"Why don't you just give it to me at lunch?" he asks as I mentally scold myself for bringing this stupid bag and for putting his pen in it, like it's my own personal property, in the first place.

"That's ridiculous, why would I do that when you're right here?" I ask, blowing a few strands of hair out of my eyes in frustration.

Joey turns slightly red and when he speaks, it's so quietly that I actually have to lean in closer to hear him.

"Well…I was…kind of hoping…that maybe you'd want to…have lunch with me…that is, if you're not already…because if you are, it's no big deal, I totally understand…"

All of this comes out so incoherently, fast at times and painfully stretched out at times, that it takes me a minute to realize that he's asking me to eat lunch with him, and all of a sudden I forget about the bag, and the pen, and how incredibly awkward I feel, because he clearly hasn't noticed.

* * *

We eat lunch together that day, and the next day, and several days that follow. At first, I'm worried that we'll have nothing to talk about, that he'll think I'm terribly boring or maybe I'll just get so tongue-tied that I won't be able to say anything at all. But Joey is surprisingly easy to talk to. In fact, talking to him is a lot like talking to my friends, or my brother and sister back home. I can be myself. We talk about our classes, and our friends, and our lives outside of school.

I learn a lot about Joey each lunch period. He's the oldest of four kids—three boys and a girl. He works afterschool in his mom's business—she runs a repair shop for home electronics, like televisions and appliances. When he's done with school, he wants to train as an engineer. I tell him I think he'd be a great one, and he blushes. He asks me about my family, about the factory where I work with Electra afterschool and we commiserate about how hard it is sometimes, trying to keep a family in bread. His parents both work; his mom does fairly steady business in her shop, but as the oldest son it's his responsibility to help out as much as he can. Dad and Electra do what they can, but even with my earnings and the pocket money Bolton brings home from the job Dad got him on weekends, that doesn't mean that we can avoid taking out tesserae. Rent is expensive. Food and clothes and electricity aren't free. And growing kids need to eat.

Joey's expression darkens when I mention tesserae. "That's another thing," he says matter-of-factly. "If any of my brothers ever get chosen in the reaping, I have to go in for them."

"What?" I ask, startled by this sudden announcement. The idea of a District 3 volunteer is, I admit, a little ludicrous.

"They're my little brothers," Joey says simply. "It's my job to protect them. If I can take their place, I will."

I think about this for a second, wondering naturally if Electra had once resolved to do the same for me. She's twenty now, too old to volunteer, and we were both eligible together for only two years anyway. But I have no doubt that she would've done the same, if she could.

I shudder, secretly glad that I'll never have to make a sacrifice like that for a younger sister, then almost immediately feel _very_ guilty and _very_ selfish, because clearly Joey is a far better person than me. He seems to think all this talk of tesserae and reapings and sacrifice has upset me, because he changes the subject hurriedly to last night's homework.

* * *

The weather turns warmer and Joey takes to walking me home from school. The school year's drawing to an end. Soon, it will be summer and I'll be working full day shifts at the factory. I wonder if I'll be able to see Joey like I do now. He'll be in his mother's shop all day, tinkering with broken television sets in the back room, no doubt.

We're walking home one Tuesday afternoon when he suddenly says, "So…big day tomorrow."

Tomorrow is Reaping Day. I allow my thoughts to drift to the square full of people, me in my best dress, the unnatural silence of the crowd. I think of the papers with my name in those glass balls—far too many of them. Then I think of Joey, who has plenty of slips of paper with _his_ name on them and still finds the courage to take responsibility for every paper marked with one of his brothers' names. This is so sad and so brave that I feel tears burning in the corners of my eyes and I hurriedly look away so he won't see me crying.

"Wiress? What's wrong? Are you crying? I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to scare you…"

"I'm not…scared…" I murmur, struggling to keep my voice steady and fight the tears that are threatening to overcome me at the same time.

He grabs me by the shoulders and turns me around to face him. He's tall, tall for District Three and probably even tall in general, so I have to look up to see his face properly. A single tear escapes and slides traitorously down my cheek.

"You _are _upset," he says, and I quickly wipe the tear away, angry at my body for betraying my feelings.

"I was thinking of _you_, if you must know," I say defiantly, because the last thing I want him to know is how scared I am of tomorrow, of hearing our district escort call my name. We haven't had a victor in District Three in maybe five years or so. Before that one, we hadn't had a victor in my entire life, maybe even in my parents' lifetimes, for all I know.

"Of me?"

"About what you said—about volunteering for your brothers."

Silence. Then—

"Are you going to try and talk me out of it?"

There's an edge to Joey's voice that I haven't heard before, as though daring me to try and talk him out of doing something he's already steeled his will to do.

"No," I reply in a small voice. This is all too big for me. Family and responsibility and sacrifice…it's hard to believe that not too long ago, we were just a boy and a girl with a pen and a regular lunch date and that was enough for us. But now he's accusing me of trying to talk him out of sacrificing his life for one of his little brothers. It's hard to believe we're having this conversation at all, much less at sixteen.

"I'm just worried about you, that's all," I concede, and his expression softens. "I don't want you to have to go. I want you to stay here and grow up and become an engineer."

"And I don't want you to have to go, either. You should stay here where you can finish school and become a famous inventor and marry some lucky guy and have a bunch of kids with pretty eyes like yours." This is so heartfelt and so personal that my resolve not to cry nearly crumbles, but he keeps talking, so I force myself to focus on the words and not on my thoughts.

"But if they do call me up tomorrow—and I'm not saying they will—I'm ready to do the right thing." He leans down and gently brushes the hair away where it's stuck to my tearstained face, and I nod to show that yes, I see what he means and yes, I can accept it, even if I don't like it.

"Would you at least let me give you a kiss for luck?" I ask coyly, wondering if I'm being a little too forward or not. We're both so caught up in the emotions of Reaping Day tomorrow that I don't know if this is maybe too soon, but then again, after tomorrow it might be too late.

He grins, a real smile, a happy smile, and says, "Only if you let me give you one."

I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach him, and I'm sure he's leaning down closer toward me. What an odd couple we must make, him so tall—at least around here—and me so tiny. His lips are soft and it feels nice, to be kissing him, this brave boy who is ready to give his life for his brothers but took two years to work up the nerve to ask me to have lunch with him. I've never kissed a boy before, but if this is what it feels like every time, then I think I could get used to it.

* * *

He's not called in the reaping the next day, thankfully, and neither are his brothers, and neither am I. Maybe that means we _did_ rush into things a bit, but it also means that maybe he'll give me a second kiss and I'll get to see if it's anything like the first.

* * *

_The end! I must say, it was nice to end on a happy note for once. I'm more interested in what you think, though, so please send me your reviews! Tomorrow, we move along to a less happy day...sorry, Wiress..._

_Delilah_


	6. Eighteen

_Good morning! Today's chapter was hinted at slightly in yesterday's, in a couple of places. And so, on this lovely summer day, we're off to the reaping! Talk about ironic._

_Special thanks to those who took the time to review. _

_As per usual, I own nothing._

* * *

Eighteen

I am eighteen when I am chosen in the reaping. It would've been my last year of eligibility, and the cruelest part is knowing I was _so close_ to being safe at last.

Eighteen—skinny, small, utterly unimpressive at first sight. It's my last year of eligibility and we're all waiting until this whole thing is over, so we can go home and let out the deep breath that we're all holding: two kids now who've escaped the Games; one to go. In the meantime, my sister stands in the first row of spectators, fingers crossed to ward off the worst luck a family could imagine. On the boys' side, my brother stands impassive in a group of fifteen-year-olds. I've been lucky so far, despite the tesserae and the Quarter Quell five years ago where four tributes were chosen from each district. On the other hand, no one is truly safe until they blow out the candles for number nineteen.

It's sunny, which strikes me as ironic; such beautiful weather on such an awful day. Last year, it was raining, and even though Bolton and I were shivering equally from fear and cold as the rainwater ran down the backs of our necks and saturated our best clothes, there was something poetic in the dark skies and the rain that fell like teardrops from the sky above. It felt as if the earth and the heavens wept to see what had become of us, the way Panem devours its children. But this year, my sister shook me awake and I had to squint through the obscenely bright sun, shining in through our grimy windowpanes as though today were a beautiful fresh start, where anything is possible and the future is bright. It just doesn't feel right, seeing two kids from our district off to certain death on a day where the sun is shining and the sky is blue.

The square in front of the Justice Building is packed with people. Reaping-age children are signed in and pushed to the front, to the roped-off sections set apart by age, ushered past armed Peacekeepers and camera crews broadcasting our dull, gray square all over the nation. The coverage of each year's reaping ceremonies gives me the only impression I have of the other districts. All my assumptions are based solely and squarely upon those minutes of footage captured in their town squares on Reaping Day. Sometimes, I wonder if this is really fair, but today I have bigger concerns.

Behind the ropes separating those of us who are in danger from those who are safe stands the rest of District 3's population. We can't fit every person in the district in the square, of course, but priority is given to the families of eligible kids. Electra's managed to get a prime spot directly behind the rope, right behind the last row of terrified twelve-year-olds. I'm way up front this year; it's as if the Capitol wants to extract the last exquisite ounce of fear out of potential tributes before they age out of the Hunger Games.

The ceremony begins at precisely nine-thirty. I know the reapings are staggered at half-hour intervals, so you could theoretically watch them all live, one right after another, and part of me wonders if it's worse for kids in the higher-numbered districts, where they have to bide their time until afternoon to know if they're headed to the Capitol or not. Sometimes it's just better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

The girls standing around me are silent. Maybe they feel that they'll be sick if they open their mouths. I know I might.

I look over my shoulder to the section where Bolton is standing with the other fifteen-year-old boys. His face has turned the same bloodless, gray color as paste. I try to give him an encouraging smile but my jaw feels like it's locked in place and a muscle in my cheek twitches madly.

As the chairs on the stage in front of the Justice Building begin to fill, the mayor of District 3 steps up to the podium and begins to read the history of Panem, then the Treaty of Treason, just like every year. She's a thin, nervous-looking woman with frizzy dark hair and wide eyes that give her a permanent look of surprise. I can't focus on the Treaty of Treason, though, or the list of District 3's past victors, which is as disappointingly short as always, and not just because we hear the exact same thing every year; I'm distracted by the glare of the overly-bright sun, the tense breathing of the girls around me, my own nerves. _Last one,_ I tell myself soothingly, _just this once more and you're free…_ Of course, I'm wrong on this count; Bolton still has three years of eligibility before our family can breathe again. But I have to say something to quiet my mind, so I ignore this last point.

With the victors introduced to us—again, as though none of us have ever seen them before—the mayor calls forward our Capitol-appointed district escort. Her name is Lucretia and this is only her second year escorting District 3's tributes. I don't know what she did before coming here last year; I guess being called up to the Games seems like a big adventure to her or something. She certainly acts that way.

"Happy Hunger Games, District 3!" she trills to the crowd. No one says a thing. The silence is as absolute as any I've ever heard. It is deafening.

Lucretia gazes keenly out at the crowd, waiting for the cheers that will never come, then at our two living victors, seted on stage behind her. Neither looks particularly thrilled to be here; on the contrary, they seem to be wishing they were anywhere else right now. I know this because I'm wishing the exact same thing. Lucretia apparently decides that the excitement of the main event will get the crowd sufficiently revved up. She crosses to the glass bowls where mine and Bolton's and hundreds of other kids' names are written on tiny slips of paper, just begging not to be pulled out and read.

"Well, now, it's time for the moment we've all been waiting for," she croons. It's amazing how she manages to show every single one of those gleaming white teeth whether she's talking or not. "Time to choose District 3's newest tributes for the Fifty-Fifth Hunger Games!" She waves her hands theatrically around the glass bowls as though she's trying to sell their contents to the crowd. "Who shall we choose first this year? Boys or girls?"

Lucretia looks from the boys' side of the crowd to the girls' side, then back again, her gaze bright and interested. Failing to receive the kind of crowd participation she seeks, she finally raises a hand whose fingers end in three-inch talons instead of fingernails. They're vaguely metallic-looking.

"Let's get the ball rolling with the boys, then!" She rummages her metallic claw of a hand in the glass ball filled with the boys' names, making a great show of making her selection, finally emerging with a slightly-crumpled slip of paper clutched between her fingers.

"Eddie Joule," she enunciates carefully, beaming out at the assembled kids and their parents. Eddie numbly detaches himself from the crowd and walks forward as though he's climbing the steps to the gallows. Even though I'm relieved it's not Bolton, I cringe as our newest male tribute walks past my row. He's only fourteen.

Eddie Joule looks like he's mere minutes away from fainting from terror as he stands there on the stage, next to Lucretia, while she calls for volunteers and none present themselves.

Here we go…a few more minutes and it'll all be over….

"Oh, I know what you're thinking, girls: 'Why should he have all the fun?' But don't despair! Because now, it's _your_ turn to join the party!" Lucretia deftly ignores the terrified boy fighting the impulse to run beside her and rustles through the girls' reaping ball. My heart is pounding as I watch the progress of the little slip of paper trapped in her grip, from the depths of the glass ball to midair to right in front of her heavily made-up face. This is it…the moment of truth. The one that decides whether or not I have a future.

Lucretia clears her throat; a high, breathy sound. "Wiress—"

When they call my name, sounds start behaving strangely. First, everything goes silent, as though I've gone temporarily deaf. I don't even hear her call my last name, and yet I somehow know undeniably that it's me that she just called, just like I know that my life has just ended. I am dead, dead at eighteen.

I'm not sure how long I stand there, deaf from shock and paralyzed by grief. Slowly, my senses return to me, one by one. The first things I hear are the low sighs of relief from all the girls standing around me. I feel the weight of their stares as they all turn to look at me and a strange feeling comes over me, like I'm sleepwalking, as my legs carry me up the steps to the stage. It takes twenty-eight steps to get me there. I'm trembling visibly as I set my foot on the bottom stair, then the next one. I stumble on the third, but no one's there to catch me. No one will ever be there to catch me again.

Somehow, I make it up the steps and to the middle of the stage. Lucretia asks for volunteers but I already know that this is a waste of time. The only person I can think of who'd even consider volunteering for me is Electra, who's been trying to protect Bolton and me any way she can since our mother died. But Electra's too old to volunteer and no one else in the crowd loves me enough to give their own life in exchange for mine. I don't resent them for this, though—I wouldn't do it, either, if I were in their place.

The mayor motions for Eddie and me to shake hands, and he holds out a hand that's shaking so badly that I can barely get a grip on it. Close up, he reminds me a little of my brother. They have the same big, brown eyes. I feel the strange, alien pressure of his hand in mine as we face the solemn-looking crowd, grouped in front of a large, grayish factory that I imagine might be the last bit of District 3 I'll ever see. I count the windows on the side of the building facing us. Eighteen. One is broken; some local kid probably threw a rock one night in a fit of daring and was rewarded with a whipping. Somehow, these windows sum up the course of my life-eighteen, one left broken and unfinished, destroyed in an act of pointless violence. I shake my head to rid my mind of these unsettling musings and return to the here-and-now.

It does no good. What good is waking from a nightmare when the real world is so much scarier?

* * *

_Poor Wiress! Well, I hope the reaping didn't depress you too much and I'm looking forward to reading your reviews. Happy Sunday!_

_Yours,_

_Delilah_


	7. One Hundred

_I'm back, everyone, after a long day at work. When we left off, Wiress had just been selected as District 3's female tribute in the 55th Hunger Games. Today, we continue her story just as she arrives in the Capitol._

_Special thanks go out to_ **_Pinkbookworm7_**_ and__ **vapiddreamscape** for their kind reviews._

_I don't own The Hunger Games...unless you count the blu-ray..._

* * *

One Hundred

_One hundred_. When I arrive at the Training Center to prepare for the Games, I weigh one hundred pounds and stand at sixty-one inches tall. I have skinny arms that a bigger tribute could easily snap, like dried chicken bones. Exertion leaves me wheezing. Studying my reflection in one of the tribute train's ornate mirrors, I look deep into my own wide, frightened eyes and estimate that I am roughly the size of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy from one of the Career districts. It's no secret that no one in the Capitol will want to bet on me. If I had any money, I probably wouldn't bet on me, either.

There's a crowd of Capitol citizens gathered along the train tracks as we approach the station. My curiosity overcomes my dejection, my terror and even my disdain as I stand there, waiting for our escort to get the all-clear to lead us off the train. I creep around the edge of a window and carefully lean over until I can see them. Laughing and joking like they've got the world at their feet—which, I remind myself, they _do._ Pushing each other out of the way to see if they can catch a glimpse of us as we get off the train. I wonder how they can get so excited about seeing a couple of kids who'll be dead within the week, and furthermore how this knowledge doesn't turn their stomachs. Maybe it's because I can't relate to it on any level whatsoever; I don't even get to see where my food comes from, since all of our food back home comes from boxes shipped in from other districts, so it's a strange concept: to look at a living, breathing thing and know for a fact that it will be dead soon, and for my benefit.

These Capitol people are unlike any people I've ever seen before in my life, except maybe Lucretia, and for that matter, the district escort who preceded her. They've cut and curled and dyed and altered their appearance to the point where they don't even look recognizably human anymore, and I can't help but stare at them as Lucretia sweeps us off the train and into a car with dark windows, and then I continue to stare through the blacked-out windows as the car takes us closer to our imminent doom. They aren't as fortunate as me, in a manner of speaking, because they only have a few quick minutes to indulge their curiosity as Eddie and I are transferred from train to car. They all wear the same expressions on their freakish-looking faces, though: bright curiosity, followed quickly by disappointment and dismissal.

When the car stops, we're pulled out and instantly directed into the Remake Center. I've seen it on TV, of course, but I never knew what the inside looked like, nor did I ever want to find out. I'm immediately surrounded by a flurry of feathers and body paint and strange-smelling perfume. Three people—and designating this trio as 'people' is, in my opinion, really stretching the meaning of the word, because they look so bizarre—two men and a woman, unless I'm mistaken. They start twittering rapidly, circling me like stray dogs in a junkyard, poking me and pulling at my hair and clothes. They strip off all my clothes and push me into one antiseptic-smelling bath after another, each containing a different-colored, pungent smelling concoction. The woman takes a coarse sort of sponge and scours every square inch of my body so violently that I'm certain I must be bleeding somewhere. The bathwater turns grayish with the soot that I didn't even realize my body was harboring. After a while, you just stop noticing. Now, soaking in the dismal gray bathwater, I'm led to believe that I lost a good three or four pounds from the deep-cleansing my pores have been subjected to. I may be cleaner, but I feel smaller than my supposed hundred pounds and much more vulnerable, as though the hitherto-unseen soot had been a protective layer of camoflauge, shielding me from the world outside District 3.

"I just can't get over how—" here, she grits her teeth and reapplies herself to the herculean task of scrubbing my left arm, "—how _dirty_ your district is! Every year it takes _forever_ to get all the soot out! They really need to do something about that."

I make a mental note to tell President Snow, next time we have a private moment to chat, that all industrial production in District Three needs to halt immediately so that the grievous injury done to our complexions can be rectified. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to comply. Right after he invites the tributes to host a slumber party at his mansion and sends us all home to finish pursuing our education so we can make something of our lives.

After I'm pulled from the last of the baths and thoroughly dried, the prep team sets to work waxing, tweezing and oiling down my skin. They wax every square inch of skin they can get their hands on, leaving me feeling raw. I am completely unprepared for the shock of the waxing strips being pulled away, taking what feels like the top layer of my skin with them, my eyes starting to water.

And still, they're not done. They file my nails and buff them with some sort of block that makes them smooth and shiny before they coat them with polish. They attack my hair with a brush, pulling and commenting on my tangles as I grit my teeth in pain. I estimate that a good several teeth are ripped off the brush and lost somewhere in my hair. Finally—cold, damp, completely hairless and clad only in a flimsy cotton robe— I'm deemed acceptable enough to come face-to-face with my stylist. I sit there, abandoned by the prep team and waiting for the stylist to make his entrance, wondering what to expect.

My stylist, Felix, is at least a foot taller than me. He's as skinny as a scrap of wire and just as shiny—his skin's been bronzed to the point where he actually seems to reflect light, and he's loaded with glittery jewelry: bracelets, chains, pendants, and several earrings in each ear. These make a discordant jangling sound every time he moves.

He comes in, carrying a disproportionately large garment bag, which he deposits by the door before making his way across the room to me. Felix gestures for me to stand, which I do, and remove the robe, which I also do, my cheeks burning in embarrassment as he circles me, appraising with a critical eye. This stranger is the first person to see me naked in recorded memory, a fact I'm superlatively uncomfortable with.

Felix doesn't speak for a few minutes; he just looks, taking inventory of what he has to work with. "Not bad," he murmurs, rubbing a single lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger. He grabs one of my hands by the fingertips and raises it, dropping his gaze to my wrist.

"Skinny wrists, I see," he comments, and I blush. It's true. My wrists are bony, merely one part of my matchstick arms. But I can't help this-yesterday on the train was the first time in my whole life I've been able to eat until I physically couldn't hold any more. I doubt I'm the only tribute with skinny wrists.

"Pretty eyes, though," he continues, and I find myself wanting to cringe at the intimacy of the comment—my mother was always the one who said I had beautiful eyes—but I don't, maybe because it's the first compliment I've gotten since being picked in the reaping, and it might be all I have to lean on in terms of sponsors. "Skin held up pretty good, too…once they got all that damn soot out of your pores, that is," he adds, and I smile almost involuntarily, as the image of my prep team lobbying President Snow on behalf of the Save Our Tributes' Complexions Committee: District 3 Chapter, pops into my head.

"So…?" I begin, wondering how he'll have me made up for the Tribute Parade. Every year, the tributes are outfitted in something representing their districts' industries. District 3 is factories, which means that every year, our tributes' costumes have the potential to be either spectacular, or spectacular failures. The latter is usually the case.

Felix reaches under a nearby table and pulls out a bag I hadn't noticed before. It looks like it contains a shapeless heap of lace and some shiny iridescent fabric that I don't know the name of, but when he dumps out the fabric on a table, I realize that it's an assortment of the most complicated-looking underclothes I've ever seen.

"What's all that for?" I ask, but Felix merely gestures for me to drop the robe, which I'm still inexplicably holding. I let it fall down around my ankles, and he begins to explain as he helps me into the underclothes.

"We're going for a dramatic silhouette this year," he says, tying an underskirt made of wide, stiff wire circles around my waist. I assume it's meant to add volume to my costume. "This will hold out the skirt nicely, I think."

I nod, my arms folded protectively over my bare breasts, trying to maintain a little dignity. My long hair has been curled and pinned up in some elaborate style by the bizarre-looking prep team, so I can't hide behind it like I normally would. This is pointless, anyway, because once the skirt made of wire hoops is in place, Felix pulls my arms away and encases my torso in what I can only describe as a lace and wire cage. He guides my arms through the straps and adjusts the cups before instructing me to hold onto the edge of the table.

"What?" I ask, momentarily stunned.

"Brace yourself," he repeats, and before I know what's happening, he seizes the laces hanging innocuously from the back of the thing and pulls, tightening layers of fabric and metal boning around my waist.

"What is—this—?" I gasp, unsure whether my inability to finish the sentence is due to distraction or my newfound shortness of breath.

Felix must have knotted the laces in the back, because now he's circling me again, beaming in admiration of my slender figure. "You look so _thin_," he croons, "and taller, now that your back's nice and straight." I nod, taking shallow breaths.

"But why did I even—need—this thing?" I ask haltingly. "They—the prep team—they all said how thin I am already."

"Darling, you can _never_ be too thin," Felix replies, and I bite my tongue before I can make any comments about starving children back home, so skinny that you can count their ribs through their threadbare clothes.

The dress itself goes on over the torturous underclothes. It must weigh about fifty pounds. It's made of some sort of heavy silver fabric, with a tiny, nipped-in waist and a wide, swinging skirt. This would be heavy enough on its own, if the dress weren't completely covered with elaborately worked wire. It's stitched into the skirt and the bodice, sculpted up into a wide neckline and looped along the hem. In place of sleeves, my shoulders are encased in meshlike wire nets. I run my fingers along a length of wire spiraling down my tightly-laced torso and all of a sudden I'm wondering how I'll sit in this wire contraption. Felix seems to sense my confusion, because he gestures to the dress and says, "No sitting. Not until after the parade. Not unless you want to rip the gown to shreds."

The gown is the least of my problems; I'm more concerned about the gown ripping my flesh to shreds, so heavy is it with metal. However, I nod obediently. Between my sleepless night, my early rising this morning, lack of food, lack of oxygen and the sheer weight of this dress, I'm too tired to respond properly, much less to question whether the wire is really abrasive enough to rip the thick silver fabric. Felix ignores my silence, however, and busies himself with arranging a headdress—yet _more_ sculpted wire—in my hair.

"Does it have—have to be—so tight?" I gasp, starting to feel slightly lightheaded. Felix smirks. "That's how you know it's on right," he says simply. "Be grateful you're already thin." And I _am,_ for the first time in my life.

"Does any—anyone else—?" Again, I can't even finish the sentence, but Felix seems to understand.

"No, you're the only one, as far as I know. You should cut quite a figure out there."

I seriously doubt this. I am a short, skinny girl from District Three, standing alongside Careers who could snap me in half without breaking a sweat. Boys with bulging muscles. Girls with cold eyes and impossibly quick reflexes. They all outweigh me by at least twenty, thirty, fifty pounds. They tower over me as if I were a mere child. This dress, breathtaking as it is—and it _is_ an improvement over anything I'd expected from a District 3 stylist, who usually fail dismally in their attempts to 'reflect the flavor of the district'—can't make up for the hundred or so other areas in which I am found wanting. No matter how striking Felix may make me appear to the crowd, I am very much an afterthought.

* * *

_Well, I hope you don't mind that I kept you waiting all day for an update and that you enjoyed the chapter. Tomorrow, we delve even further into Wiress' Games. _

_In the meantime, please **review!**_

_Fun fact: Wiress' prep team's comments about her skin are drawn from my first ever trip to a spa. I live in an industrial area, but no matter how often I exfoliate, the person giving me my treatment was still astounded at the state of my pores. It's true; with so many pollutants in the air, you stop noticing after a while. _

_Until tomorrow, then,_

_Delilah_


	8. Five

_I know, readers. You're thinking: "She said 'tomorrow,' right? So why no update?" Well, two reasons. Firstly, I had company after work last night and they didn't leave until late, so I really didn't have a spare minute to call my own yesterday. And secondly, I didn't get any response over the preceding chapter, so I was really hesitant about updating when I don't even know if you read my last update, or what you thought about it. In the end, I decided to give in and publish anyway._

_This chapter is a lot longer than my previous ones, so I hope you like it and that serves as an incentive for you to review._

_Like I've said, I don't own anything._

* * *

Five

Five_. _It's the number of tributes my traps kill in the arena.

First there's the girl from District One. Sparkle. She was so beautiful—with long curls, like my sister Electra, only hers were golden-blonde rather than dark. Long legs like a dancer. She was as beautiful as the sunrise but as cold as a block of ice. Her weapon of choice was a sword; a surprisingly elegant-looking blade, considering that in the past, the vast majority of Hunger Games swords I'd seen were strictly utilitarian in design. The way she wielded that weapon, though—it was like watching a dance, it was so transfixing. She moved with a grace that I'd never be able to equal, beautiful and deadly. I, of course, felt completely inferior, and maybe a little jealous of the scores of rich Capitoleans who were most likely beating each other up for the privilege of sponsoring her.

Beautiful, graceful, cunning…but not the most intelligent of tributes, because she steps on the hair-thin wire I'd strung between the trees and low-growing plants and didn't even have time to draw breath before the spear was launched, with mechanical precision, into her torso. I watch her lie there, shock etched in every line of her face, wondering who'd outplayed her.

"What—who—?" she gasps, blood streaming from her wound, staining her clothes crimson. I step back in terror of what I've done. I can't bear to face her, to watch her die, and yet I can't turn away, either. I tread on a twig, and its telltale snap gives away my hiding spot. Her eyes find me in the gloom of the trees.

"You, is it?" chokes the dying girl contemptuously. "District Three. Who'd have thought this was how it would turn out?"

I don't answer; I simply stare at her, my eyes drawn to the bloody spectacle like moths to electric light. Defiant to the last; still convinced of her superiority, even though I've killed her.

"You think you're so _smart,"_ she continues, coughing up blood as she struggles to speak. I strain my ears for the cannon; it can't be long now, and I pity her, lying there, broken, suffering. _Just let it end_, I think. I'd hoped it would be quick, but the watching and waiting and imagining the feeling of the spear embedded in her body is, simply put, torture.

"So smart…but not smart enough. Now you'll have the whole Career pack after you. That'll teach you. Stupid girl. I hope you said your goodbyes. Your mentors won't have anything bigger than a matchbox to bring home to your family in Three once my district partner gets hold of you and—and cuts you into tiny—little—"

She shudders and is still at last. She dies with her threat to me still lingering on her lips. I feel a chill running through my body like a surge of electricity.

_You killed her, Wiress…you killed her…_

_It's not my fault,_ I reason with myself, _I acted in self defense. _

_But she's still dead. And it's your fault. Your fault._

* * *

Sparkle's district partner—the one who'd supposedly cut me into little tiny pieces, to be buried in a matchbox—never gets the chance to avenge her. He is killed when the Career alliance splits, probably because of in-fighting within the group. The alliance isn't too stable this year to begin with, so this surprises no one. Too many leaders, not enough followers, if I have to pinpoint a cause. Every one of those Careers thinking he or she is the pack leader, which leads to a remarkable unstable alliance of convenience that fractures under the slightest pressure. I later learn that the boy from District Two killed the boy from One after he knifed the girl from Two in her sleep. One's killer, the boy from Two, is a heavily muscled giant. To this day, I can't remember his name, because every time I contemplate him I am too overcome with terror to make note of anything as trivial as his name. It might as well be Death, because that's what he is synonymous with in the other tributes' eyes. He must weigh twice what I do. His hands look big enough to crush a child's skull. A killing machine, I saw him kill a boy at the bloodbath—I think he was from Eleven—with his _bare hands_ before even getting close enough to secure a weapon at the Cornucopia. Later, I learn that he had an affinity for torturing the tributes he'd captured, playing with them before finally killing them, the way a malicious child might burn ants with a magnifying glass in the sun. He did unspeakable things to the girl from Eight before finally slitting her throat; I felt violently sick watching the clip they played on TV after the Games ended.

The first word that comes to mind to describe our arena is _wet—_a couple of freshwater ponds and a huge saltwater lake that branches out into numerous swamps and vast marshland, interspersed with woodsy areas. It's as different from District Three as the Capitol is, so I'm forced to put aside everything I'm familiar with and improvise. I've found a medium-sized spool of wire in the lone backpack I managed to escape with, and I come up with the idea to string it up down in a hollow in the woods, where the ground is especially swampy and there's a lot of groundwater, especially when it rains, which happens fairly often in this arena. By wrapping it up around the trees, I can improvise a lightning rod of sorts. Of course, a generator or something of the sort would make my job so much easier, but since when do the sponsors want to make life easy for an underdog like me? No, I'll have to rely on the arena's volatile weather to power my trap, and hope for the best. I'm concealing the wire under some plants when I hear movement in the trees. Before I can hide, he barrels through the trees and freezes upon seeing me. District Two. His face curls into a cruel grimace.

"Five, is it? Or Six?" He didn't even bother to learn which tributes are from which districts. He sees us as all the same—potential victims.

"Three," I stammer, because if he's going to kill me, he's going to know who he killed.

"Three," he repeats, his twisted smile widening. "Factories, right? Sorry about that."

So, he's ready to apologize for me being from such a disadvantageous district, but not for the horrors he's likely got in store for me even as we speak?

I back up, the wire clenched protectively between my fingers. Oh, if only the Gamemakers would oblige me with a little electricity…we could both die, right now, and even if I were to suffer unbearably it would still probably be better than what this giant has planned.

"Don't think you can run from me, Three," he snarls, and my legs freeze up, because I hadn't even thought of running until he mentioned it just now. What good would it do? I'd never be able to get away. Back home, my father is probably ordering Bolton and Electra from the room, adamant that they shouldn't watch this animal brutalize their sister. My mentors are probably frozen in their seats in the Control Center, yelling at me on the screen to _run for it_, infuriated with my lack of self-preservation. The crowds across Panem are watching with bated breath, waiting to watch brawn triumph over brains.

Somehow, miraculously, I regain enough feeling in my body to keep moving, through the trees I'd looped with wire. Being so much smaller, I can squeeze through the wire I'd strung up easily; for him, it will certainly require slow going. If he wants to kill me, he's going to have to work for it.

"Get over here, District Three, or by the time I'm through with you, you'll wish you'd never been born."

He's so much bigger than me, and just like I'd predicted, he's easily tangled in the wire I'd strung up, but it deters him no more than walking through a spider's web would. I feel hands grasping me from behind. He shoves me roughly to the ground at the foot of a towering tree with branches trailing flowing clumps of greenery and pulls a knife from his belt. Its silver blade is dull with carelessly wiped-off bloodstains.

"I'm going to like cutting _you_ up, Three," he taunts. "Just because you annoy me. Then when I'm done, the Gamemakers can take down your little wire trap when they come to collect what's left of your body. How's that sound?"

I stare up at him, my eyes round with terror, wishing he'd just get it over with rather than prolonging my suffering, but that's not his style. He's got a shiny, pinkish scar above his right eye and I find myself wondering whether he came by this injury in the arena, or mixing it up with some other thug back in District Two. As he stares down at me, his mean little eyes are narrowed in contempt and I can see the shiny strips of wire he hadn't bothered to pull off, wrapped around his torso, his powerful arms, his neck, which may be as thick as my waist…

His _neck_.

One of his massive hands rips the collar of my shirt open, as easily as tearing up a tissue, and I'm seized by the terrifying possibility that he's going to do something shameful to me before he kills me, and that my family and friends and everyone I've ever known will see it. My eyes begin to water in dread and humiliation.

"That's it, District Three, cry for mercy. Only it won't do you any good. Because you won't get it." District Two speaks in short, grunting sentences, like a simpleton. _He's stupid and cruel_, I think miserably, _the worst kind of bully_. And now he has me at his mercy. His face livid with distaste for my weakness, he methodically traces my left cheek with the tip of his knife, right below the eye. I feel the skin opening at its touch and cry out involuntarily in pain, which only makes him laugh more.

"What d'you know, you _do_ bleed, Three! You've got no color; I'd thought you didn't have any blood in you at all. Guess this is going to be messier than I thought."

Squeezing my eyes shut so I don't have to watch anymore, I use all my strength to pull my arm away from where he's got it pinned down, in my last, futile attempt to fight back. I feel a blunt blow across my bleeding, stinging face, then hear an enraged sputter and something that sounds like gagging, which is what finally prompts me to open my eyes.

The spool of wire, half-empty, is still clenched in my hand, the hand I'd moved. Several coils of shiny wire, trailing back up the trunk of the nearest tree, are tightening around District Two's throat as he leans forward to butcher me. His face is reddening, both from rage and lack of oxygen. His grip on me is slackening even as he fights back in fury. I don't stop, I don't think about what's going on here; I just _pull. _As his grip loosens, I fight my way out of his arms, dash behind him as quickly as my body can move and pull both trailing sides of the wire with all my strength. My mind is completely blank as he flails, trying to shake me free with constantly decreasing strength as I cling to his massive back, tearing at the ever-tightening noose of wire with his fingers until they crack and bleed, until he finally crumples in a heap at my feet. His face is an ugly bluish color. His eyes seem to pop out, glazed over in death, filling me with revulsion. I stare at him, transfixed with horror as the realization sets in on me: that I've garroted the tribute from District Two.

The cannon that goes off jolts me back into my senses, and I look around in a panic. I grab my backpack and his knife, the one that he tried to disfigure me so cruelly with. Then I turn and run, the torn front of my shirt flapping ridiculously, wishing I could escape my feelings of guilt as easily as I escaped the scene of my crime. I resolve never to set foot in this spot again, and since I'll probably be dead soon, this seems like a reasonable vow to make.

* * *

The boy from District Five wasn't supposed to die. He wasn't very big—no bigger than me, come to think of it, and not nearly a threat in the way that the Careers were. He stumbles into one of my traps unknowingly, and he's dead before I can raise a finger to save him. I hear the sound of falling debris and know instinctively that it's one of my traps that made the sound, rather than any act of nature—or, more likely, any act of the Gamemakers. When I get to the spot where I'd triggered the rockslide—a tall embankment whose façade of stones and smooth-edged river rocks was too precariously formed to be mere coincidence—I see him buried beneath a sepulcher of rocks of all sizes. Jolted by the realization of who'd fallen into my trap—I'd forgotten he was still alive, this thirteen-year-old boy whose odds were probably even worse than mine—I scurry over and start shifting the stones from his head and shoulders. It's hard work; it was so much easier to booby-trap what was already there than to actually move the punishingly heavy rocks myself. I'm panting with exertion as his face emerges. He's still alive, though badly injured. His chest barely rises as he struggles to breathe in, and his eyes meet mine almost pleadingly. He looks at me like a dog who's been recently kicked looks up at its master—as though begging me not to hurt him anymore.

"I—I'm—" What do you say to a dying child? A child you've killed? Wordlessly, I wipe the trail of blood dribbling from his lips with the hem of my shirt. I'm kneeling in what is rapidly becoming a pool of blood.

He cries out for his mother as he dies, and I have to fight back a strong urge to throw myself into one of my remaining, undisturbed traps in penance for killing the poor boy.

That's three I've killed. I wonder if they'll ever speak of me again back home, after my death. Will they just bury their memories of me in shame?

* * *

I wasn't there when the girl from District Nine was killed. I wasn't there, even though I technically took her life and in my opinion, this smacks of indifference and even disrespect on my part. Like I couldn't even do her the courtesy of looking her in the face as she died at my hand. I saw her face in the sky that night as I took shelter from yet another thunderstorm and didn't even know it was I who'd ended her life. It's so easy, in the arena, to convince yourself that someone else is responsible. But eventually I come to terms with what I'd done, because the Hunger Games are, after all, a television show. There's always someone watching. At the ceremony after the Games, Caesar Flickerman seats me in the throne of victory and I, along with everyone else in Panem, watch for three hours as the Games are recapped in true cinematic form. I wonder if the camera catches how the color drains from my face when she appears on the screen. It's raining in the arena, yet _again,_ and District Nine's stumbling miserably through the gale. Lightning flashes overhead and thunder echoes through the air. I marvel at her poor timing and worse luck as she stumbles over a tree root, sticking precariously out of the marshy ground. She's found the place where I murdered the boy from District Two. She falls face first in a puddle of rainwater just as the sky overhead is illuminated by a dazzlingly bright flash of lightning, and promptly begins screaming as the copper wire I'd trailed along the ground and wound into the nearby trees is struck by the Gamemakers' lightning, which had been drawn to the deadly trifecta of the tall tree, the tightly-wrapped wire and the highly conductive salty water. I have to wonder at the precision of the hit; it's as if the Gamemakers had tired of Nine-whose name, I believe, was Tricia and mentioned something about a little brother back home in her interview-and decided to use me to finish her off. Her shrieks seem to go on and on forever, and I know in an instant that they'll echo in the dark recesses of my mind until my dying day. The convulsions, the screams, all so poignantly familiar—it's Beetee's Games all over again, something Caesar doesn't hesitate to point out, and I'm so repulsed at what I'd done that I'm rendered completely speechless and don't get a single word out for three days.

* * *

The boy from District Seven was cunning. He was smart enough to make it to the very end, where so many others—including his district partner, and mine as well—had failed. He'd tricked the boy from District Four into hunting him in the deepest part of the forest, then leapt down from a tree's thick branches without so much as a warning and hewed District Four's head right from his body with something that I can only suppose is called a battle-axe. He then tricked the boy's district partner into thinking he'd been killed by the pair from Ten, so she went off and killed them herself, thinking District Seven to be her ally. She killed them for no real reason, though she _thought_ she was avenging her dead district partner…when in reality, the boy's killer was right beside her, waiting for the right time to strike. That time came when she stopped to bottle water at a freshwater pond deep in the forest. He killed her and left her body floating in the pond, staining the water red with her blood. District Four…fishing…I wonder if it was intended as an insult.

We are the last two left, in the end. Seven and Three. No one could have predicted such an ending. He finds me raiding the Cornucopia, though pretty much everything of value had long since been taken.

"Well, I guess this is it," he calls out, trying to lure me towards him. "Only two of us left, and only one of us is getting out of here."

Somehow, I find enough bravado inside myself to retort, "Well done, you've mastered practical math."

District Seven scowls at me, swinging his battle-axe menacingly. "I don't care how smart you _think_ you are; when it comes down to it, you could never beat me in a fight." He stalks closer, and with every step he takes, I take one away from him.

I feel like my mind's working a mile a minute. What do I know about my opponent? I think his name's Ash, or something like that, but in my head I refer to him invariably as 'District Seven' because it makes it easier to fight him if I can temporarily ignore his life back home; he'd been a pretty good wrestler and sword-fighter in Training, at least for a novice, but his aim at the knife-throwing station left something to be desired. He wore a tree costume in the Tribute Parade and refused to let the Careers intimidate him in his interview. Other than this, I know nothing about him, or at least nothing that can save me. What are my options here? Can I outrun him? No, I'd get out of breath too easily and he'd overtake me and kill me. Overpower him? That's a laugh; though I'm a year older, he's a good nine or ten inches taller than me, and heavier as well. Maybe if I could somehow get the axe away from him? Well, then he'd probably beat me to death with his bare hands, and who knows how prolonged that would be?

I debate just standing still and letting him end it fast, but for the first time, I'm faced with the distinct possibility of being the victor of the Fifty-Fifth Hunger Games, and now that the chance of going home again is laid out before me, I'm not giving it up without a fight.

He swings at me with his axe, but I dodge out of the way and its blade wedges in the side of the Cornucopia. As he braces himself to pull it out, I seize my chance and bury the knife I'd stolen from District Two's body deep in his right shoulder.

"You little—" he screeches in rage as I twist the knife in deeper, and as he frees his axe he swings it violently towards me, but his aim is off and it's clear I've weakened him.

It isn't over yet, though. I'm tired and hungry and dehydrated; he looks just as tired but a little better fed. We're both sporting injuries in various states of healing. If I had to guess, I'd say his were worse—direct combat was much more _his_ style in these Games than mine. The next time he aims his axe at me, I go in to strike at his chest with my knife and fail to notice the axe as he brings it down into the back of my left leg. I collapse on the ground, moaning in pain, and he raises it over me to deal the deathblow. If I hadn't injured his dominant arm, his blow probably would've taken my leg clean off. It's still attached, luckily, but bleeding profusely and most likely broken. If I'd had any chance at running, it's gone now.

Instinctively, I flail out wildly with the knife, not really aiming, just hoping I hit him. Why hadn't I set up any kind of traps near the Cornucopia? If I had, he'd be dead by now and I'd be on my way home. I'm so fed up with these Games, so desperate to either kill him or die that I don't even take the time to consider how I've changed ever since I stood over Sparkle as she died, impaled by one of my traps. What happened to the guilt? The sense of responsibility? I'm actually wishing I'd rigged a similar trap in this area so that this boy—a seventeen-year-old kid with parents, maybe brothers and sisters, certainly friends, possibly a girlfriend far away in District Seven—could die like all the others. What have I become?

A squelching sound lets me know that my knife's made contact. District Seven drops his axe as his hands clutch at his middle, where I've embedded the knife. It's kind of funny how I hit my target better when I'm not looking than when I'm actually trying. He struggles to pry the knife from my hands and pull it out, but I wrench it out before he can claim it. He sinks to his knees and topples over on top of me, his longer arms reaching out for the knife, the one weapon either of us is still strong enough to wield. It looks like the Fifty-Fifth Hunger Games is going to end in a wrestling match between two wounded tributes over a single knife.

He grabs the end of my long hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and pulls my head back with one hand while forcing the knife out of my hands with the other. If he wants to slit my throat, he's got the perfect angle to do so. If he gets up and runs with the knife, I'm dead, because I know my injured leg won't support my weight. But he's bleeding too badly to get up, so he raises the knife and stabs me once, twice with it. The first strike misses my chest—where I assume he'd been aiming—and instead tears a deep gash slightly above the crook of my arm. The second, however, sinks into my side, probably breaking a rib or two. Stars explode before my eyes as I howl in pain.

"This…this is it, Three," he pants. He looks as pale as me as the blood drains from his body. "This is the end."

Yes, but for which one of us? I'm struggling to breathe and in more pain than I've ever been in my life, but I'm still alive and, as far as I can tell, he's weakening at a lot faster rate than I am. I'm desperate to end this nightmare so I can wake up, safe and sound, home in my bed.

"No—" I pant, steeling myself for what must be done, and with every breath I take I can feel the sharp pain left by his knife between my ribs. My fingers find it on the bloodstained ground, close around its handle. I see the fear and shock in his eyes as I raise it one last time and stab him directly in the heart. "_This_ is the end," I gasp, pushing him off me. Then, completely spent, I collapse beside him, my injured leg useless to better position myself, my fingers trying to staunch the flow of blood from my side. District Seven is gasping desperately for air, whimpering pitifully like a lost child. "I—I said I'd come—c-come home…" he moans.

"I—I didn't," I reply, my voice faint as his face starts to swim in and out of focus.

"I n-never thought it'd be y-_you_ who'd—who'd kill me, D-District Three," he continues. His voice is echoing in my ears like he's a billion miles away.

"I'm…" I start to apologize, but I'm finding it harder and harder to get the words out. "S-sorry."

"M-me, too." I feel something—his hand grabbing mine—and as certain as I am that one of us will soon be dead, I'm comforted to know that at least I'm not alone in my fear of dying here, so far from those who love me. Maybe the Fifty-Fifth Games are will have no victor at all.

A moment later, the cannon sounds, followed by the trumpets.

* * *

Five dead tributes. All killed by my hand. I know this for a fact because I see their faces every night as I try to sleep. It is _this_, the sense of guilt I can't shake, that prompts me to refuse the Capitol's offer of a fancy job building weapons for them. They're impressed by my ingenuity, but I'm terrified of it, because who knew I was capable of such violence? Haven't I caused enough death already? The nerve of them, trying to buy my expertise, expertise that had been forged in blood!

Later, the Capitol makes me another offer, one that I have a lot more trouble refusing, largely because of the strings attached. Maybe I should've taken the first deal they offered me. But no, if I have to choose between being a murderess and being a whore, I'll choose whore. Even if, technically, I'm _already_ a murderess, five times over.

I report to the Capitol for my first 'appointment' on my nineteenth birthday. Before I leave, Beetee gives me a box tied with a beautiful yellow ribbon. It's an exquisite iced cake. I've never had a birthday cake before, and I insist that he sit and eat a slice with me, because I want to have a moment of happiness I can cling to when that train pulls away, taking me along with it, to surrender what's left of my dignity. When I blow out the candles and make a wish, it is that my first appointment in the Capitol will also be my last. My wish never comes true.

Then again, I can think of five more wishes that never came true, all because of me. Those five tributes, who'd wished to go home. I made sure that didn't happen, didn't I, so why should I get _my_ wish?

* * *

_Well, there you have it-Wiress' Games, condensed into the story of five dead tributes and one live one. I hope my nearly five-thousand-word update moves you to review while you wait for the next chapter, which I'd like to have up tomorrow or the next day. Hint-reviewing might motivate me to get it up faster! But honestly, I do hope to get it up sooner rather than later; work just tends to complicate things._

_Until next time, then,_

_Delilah_


	9. Eleven

_Good morning, everyone! I'm going in a little late today, which gave me time to post before I left home. _

_Firstly, thank you to **Pinkbookworm7** and **KTstoriesandstuff** for reviewing chapter 8!_

_Secondly, even though it's been said, allow me to reiterate that I don't own this or any of the characters/settings/details within._

* * *

Eleven

Eleven is the number of districts I visit on my Victory Tour before I can come home. We start in Twelve, then work our way down to One, then the Capitol, skipping Three for last.

I've seen victory celebrations before—every year, for my whole life. I grew up standing in the crowds in the district center, or otherwise sitting on my father's shoulders to catch a glimpse of that year's victor, who came home because our tributes did not. One memorable year, the celebration was even for a District Three victor, imagine that! That was the best one, because even though it felt wrong to be cheering for a boy around Electra's age just because he managed to electrocute four teenagers on TV, Parcel Day was sometimes the one thing that got us through the month. It was a celebration that surpassed all of our birthdays and the I-didn't-get-called dinner on Reaping Day combined.

Before the Games, I'd never traveled further than the district center back home. My travels were limited to home, school, the factory where I worked after school and the public market. Seeing the other districts is like stepping into a cold shower first thing in the morning. No, it's like stepping into a _Capitol_ shower first thing in the morning—thoroughly disorienting. I'd learned in school about the other districts' industries—everyone does—but no one _really_ knows what life is like in any district other than your own. The Capitol doesn't want you to know, because knowledge is power, and only the Capitol is permitted to possess power.

First, we stop in Twelve. There is snow on the ground there, but it's not the uniform gray of the snow back home. This snow is white, flecked with little black specks that I assume to be coal dust. The crowd that turns out to see us in the town square is stony-faced and quiet. They're craning their necks to catch a good glimpse of me, the oddity—the scrawny girl from Three who somehow managed to take home the victor's crown. Five years ago, they were the winning district, home of another oddity—an irreverent boy with a glimmer of mischief in his eyes, who triumphed in a field of forty-eight tributes. They give me a dinner in the mayor's house, where I eat foods I've never tried before and learn how to dance an exuberant dance accompanied by a lot of stomping and clapping and hollering. I don't know why Twelve is seen as such a laughingstock among the districts, because I find them very interesting. Different from what I'm used to, and different from what I'd expected.

Eleven is warm and dry and sunny. The crowd in the square is immense and they stare at me like I come from another planet, rather than just another district. I must look strange to them, I realize, because where most of them are dark- or olive-skinned, I'm a colorless porcelain doll. A small one. And my dark hair just heightens the contrast. I feel almost insubstantial. Their strong District 11 sun is so unlike what we have back home that I can actually _feel_ my skin burning pink, and Lucretia fusses over me and my equally ashen-faced mentors, insisting that we stay in the shade, insisting I wear the wide-brimmed hat Felix has tried to settle on my head at least four times. But even so, it's nice to be out in real sunshine, and not the halfhearted kind that peeks through a thick layer of industrial smog. Eleven is full of sad little shacks that make me homesick for our third-floor brick tenement and sad-faced children dressed in rags. They look even hungrier than we were the winter after my mother died, when things were so hard. I think of the boy from Eleven as I search out his family at the front of the crowd. All I see is a tall, skinny girl—_young woman_, I correct myself—maybe a year or two older than me. Too young to be his mother, I wonder if she is perhaps his sister, whether they grew up in the community home, and whether she's all alone now that the boy from District Two killed her brother in the first minute of the Games, with his bare hands. The eyes that gaze back at me from her spot in front of the hurriedly-constructed stage are as blank and empty as a night without stars, a District Three night.

District Ten. I never really gave much thought to where meat came from before, maybe because we could rarely afford it growing up. I mean, I know the mechanics of it—the animals live, then they're slaughtered. Kind of like tributes, come to think of it, except we don't eat them afterwards. But here, I realize just how _big_ cattle are-frighteningly so-how exhausting it looks to work with these giant, scary-looking animals every day. The banquet they serve here is lavish, with succulent dishes prepared of the freshest and juiciest meat outside the Capitol, which I devour shamelessly. It is here that I learn that the girl tribute from Ten was the mayor's daughter, and he squeezes my hand warmly when we're introduced, because while the machinations of the boy from Seven led to the deaths of the his daughter and her district partner, it was I who finally put an end to the boy from Seven. Does this bother me? Yes, I think it does, and I settle heavily into reticence because I can't think of what to say. The complex web of gratitude and resentment that grows between victors and the families of the fallen tributes is enough to make your head hurt, and just another way the Capitol gets us all to mistrust each other.

District Nine is flat as any place I've ever seen. Wheat fields, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye can see. I lower my eyes in shame as I make my speech to the assembled crowd, because I know I'll fall to pieces if I have to face _her_ parents, the parents of the girl I killed. I never planned to hurt the girl from District Nine—I think her name was Tricia—but I knowingly left a trap waiting in a swampy part of the arena and she was unlucky enough to get caught in it. Too late—I foolishly look over to where the tributes' families are standing. Tricia's mother is sobbing into her hands; her father has an arm protectively wrapped around her shoulders. A boy stands beside them, clad in worn overalls—thirteen or so, by the looks of him—and he's eyeing me with a cold kind of hatred. _Who are you, to kill my sister?_ he seems to ask, _What makes you so worthy to live when she had to die?_ I honestly have no answer for this, and when I manage to look away, back over the crowd, I realize that I've cut off in the middle of my speech and everyone's staring at me as if wondering about my mental stability. _She's lost it_, they must be thinking. _Look at the victor from Three. Completely nuts._ I can barely choke down my dinner that night, and it's a relief when the wheat fields recede from view as the train slips away.

Once we arrive in District Eight, I feel at home at last. The factories, the tenement houses, the ubiquitous brick and concrete…it's as familiar as my own face staring back at me in the mirror. They take us on a tour of a textile mill, one where they make different high-end fabrics for big-name designers in the Capitol. Of course, I didn't expect them to show us around the factories where _our_ clothes are made, because who'd want to see that on television? It's odd; when I went to the Capitol, as much as I hated the place and all it stood for, I was still able to see how much better it was than District Three. There, the air was clear, the buildings breathtakingly beautiful. Yet District Three is still _home_, and being away from home, from what it represents—my dad, Electra and Bolton, my friends and neighbors and _normalcy_—leaves a kind of dull ache inside. District Eight is every bit as dull and gray and dreary as home is, and it makes me realize just how much I'm aching to see my loved ones after all this is over. The parents of the girl from District Eight beam at me, and I'm not sure whether to smile back or not. Their daughter was brutalized by the boy from Two, ravaged and tortured before he finally killed her, and I would likely have met the same fate if I hadn't managed to kill him first. I know they think they owe me something, the one who avenged their daughter's cruel death, but I certainly don't feel like a hero. If I were to be honest with myself, I feel every bit as guilty as the boy who killed their daughter, who in turn must've had some tribute kills of her own…where does it end? But in the end, I return their smile, because to be a girl from District Eight is probably a lot like being a girl from District Three, and so I feel a sort of kinship with their dead daughter and am glad, to some degree, that I could somehow punish her murderer.

You can smell the trees before you even enter District Seven officially. Miles and miles of forests. Before the Hunger Games, I'd never actually seen a forest in person before; in fact, I'm not even sure the arena counts, since it's a completely artificial environment. But there's nothing artificial about the forests here in Seven. I feel sick to my stomach getting off the train, because there's no escaping the fact that if I didn't make it home to District Three, then Ash would've made it home to Seven. My cheeks burn with shame when I think back to how the two of us—bloody, broken—rolled around on the ground, fighting desperately for the knife that I would use to end his life. The sense of shame becomes almost overpowering when I think about how, after I'd dealt him the deathblow, Ash moaned that he wanted to go home, clenched my hand like a scared little boy and held me like I was the only one who could comfort him at the end—me, his murderer. His family glares at me with undisguised hatred; I think his father would very much like to bludgeon me with a fallen tree branch, and would have a try if there weren't a veritable wall of Peacekeepers blocking the way. This is the sort of thing the Capitol relishes—the hatred that festers between districts when a scared tribute from one kills an equally scared tribute from another. _I want to go home_, I whimper into my pillow that night as the train speeds away.

By the time we get to District Six, I'm weary of the Victory Tour and all it stands for. I'm haunted by the families I see from my designated place on the hastily-erected stage in each district—though the faces are different in every place, the crushing sense of loss is the same. The parties that follow seem hollow and superficial, because is anyone really in the mood to celebrate, other than Lucretia of course, and Felix and my prep team, who are now celebrities of a sort, having the honor of styling Panem's newest victor. Food loses its flavor and gains the consistency of ash in my mouth, so I would neither know nor care if I were eating gruel or caviar. I feel a constant sense of tiredness, like I'm dragging myself through the motions of the day, like my veins are full of thick, gloppy custard. My mentors look at me with concern; they whisper behind their hands when I listlessly take my seat at the breakfast table and can merely take a few sips of tea before I push my plate away. "You have to eat," Gloria insists, with Beetee nodding fervently in agreement beside her. "Even some rolls…_please_, Wiress, we know it's hard, but you have to keep up your strength." "We promise, it'll get better," adds Beetee gently, and somehow I find the will to eat a bit more, sleep a little less fitfully, and push on. I thought the fighting ended when the trumpets sounded in the arena. If only I'd known then that I'd spend the rest of my life fighting to move on!

Five has echoes of home for me, too; maybe not as strongly as Eight did, but I sense familiarity when they take me on a tour of the power plants and I can hear the hum of the generators and immediately think of my own district. This place has echoes of the omnipresent guilt that's been dogging my footsteps all this time, too…because out of all the tributes I killed, I regret the death of the boy from Five the most. He was young, he was terrified, and he didn't see my trap as he ran for his life through the woods. He'd cried for his mother in the end, as I wiped the trickle of blood from his chin almost lovingly, and after we thank the mayor of Five and return to the train, I crawl into my bed and cry for _my_ mother, too, because I wonder if she'd even recognize me anymore, this strange new person her daughter's become.

In District Four, I see the ocean for the first time in my life. The air smells like salt and damp. Beetee takes me walking on the beach and he laughs at me when the waves roll in and I jump back from the encroaching water, because I've never been on a beach before and don't know what to expect. I half want to push him right in that cold-looking water to teach him a lesson for teasing me, but since no one from back home can swim, I'm so scared he'd drown and I'd be left almost entirely alone in the world that I settle for an indignant look or two. I may cry for my mother, but it's Beetee now who gives me advice, Beetee who dries my tears and talks me through the dark moods that threaten to overtake me some days. If anything good comes out of this torturous Victory Tour, it's that I've found a friend.

I can't say I enjoy my trip to District Two at all. It's unsurprising that the largest number of Hunger Games victors came from here. I feel them everywhere I look. Everything here looks rough and hard—the big blocks outside the stonecutters' shops, waiting for carving; the buildings of limestone and granite; the ramrod-straight posture of the trainee Peacekeepers as they drill on the square; the huge, hollowed-out mountain in the middle of the district. I'm afraid of this place. I'm afraid of the harsh-sounding cheers of the crowd, because I imagine they express more hatred and contempt than admiration. Most of all, I'm afraid of the boy from District Two, who invades my thoughts around every turn here even though he's dead and gone. I honestly can't say what scares me more—the knowledge that I killed him with my own hands, or the idea of what he would have done to me if I _hadn't_ killed him.

Everything in District One is shiny and glittery; not quite as much as in the Capitol, but close. There's nothing shiny about the looks the tributes' families are giving me, though. I killed the District One girl, Sparkle. One of my so-called clever traps ended up impaling her with a spear, right through the middle. I can tell by the looks they're giving me that her parents wish she'd decapitated the skinny little District Three upstart at the bloodbath like was _supposed_ to happen—you know, in the real world, where the Careers win every year and people like me don't live to see the first night's death recap. The party the mayor gives here is truly superb, and Felix has pulled out all the stops, dressing me in a bejeweled gown that makes me look older and more sophisticated than I feel. As I wait at the top of a magnificent marble staircase to make my entrance, my fingers run over the glittering fabric, tracing patterns in it. Vaguely, I wonder to myself if I'll trip on its trailing hem, fall down the stairs and make an utter fool of myself. Beetee seems to have the same thought, though, because he looks back from where he stands beside Gloria a few paces ahead of me and whispers, "Don't fidget—you look beautiful."

"What if I—" Even the mere thought of tumbling down these shiny stairs is embarrassing.

"You won't fall. And don't worry—if you do, I'll be sure to catch you."

I don't know whether this pronouncement is comforting or hilarious, but it gives me the courage to straighten up and smile and face the crowd one more time. At the reaping, I'd been so sure that no one would ever again be there to catch me, as I'd stumbled on the stairs. Now, it's clear that I was wrong, and never in my life has it made me so happy to admit this.

The Capitol is as mesmerizing as usual. The party they throw me is decadent on a level I'd never imagined existed. There's a band seemingly floating in the middle of a fishpond; there's a bar carved entirely from ice, complete with ice glassware; there's more food in this one room than I think I've eaten in my entire life put together. I'm constantly being pulled from one side of the room to another, posed for photographs with rich people who must've pulled some serious strings to score an invitation to this most prestigious of parties. Someone hands me a crystal glass of some jewel-brigh liquid; it smells incredible and I'm so thirsty that I drink the whole glassful gratefully. This is a mistake, though, because whatever it is sends my head reeling. The endless introductions blend into each other, and the ground feels unsteady beneath my feet as I dance with one sponsor after another.

"What were they thinking, offering her that stuff?" Beetee hisses as he deposits me on the sofa when we finally get back to the train.

"A little drink at a party never hurt anyone," Lucretia trills unconcernedly. "She's eighteen; she can have a drink if she wants to."

"She's maybe a hundred pounds, soaking wet," Beetee counters, "and besides, everyone knows that the liquor at these Capitol parties is particularly strong—"

Gloria interjects something, but I don't notice what it is as I snuggle into the velvety upholstery of the couch, because the buzzing in my head's given me time to think. It's all over. I'm going home. I've done my duty, seen Panem and can now leave it all behind me.

Why, then, do the other eleven districts weigh so heavily on my mind? It can't be because I killed their tributes, because even in my worst fits of guilt and self-loathing I can't claim _that_ much responsibility. Perhaps it's because now that I've seen them, I realize that the people in the other districts are not so different from us. That they suffer like we do. Live like we do. And that no matter what resentment may arise over which district's tribute killed another district's tribute, in the end, it's the Capitol who's killed them all. There was only one enemy I ever really had to face. And it wasn't the boy from District Seven.

* * *

_And thus concludes the Fifty-Fifth Hunger Games. But don't worry, our story isn't done yet! So while you're waiting to see where we go from here, drop me a line and review today's chapter. _

_Just a warning that updates might become a little less regular in the upcoming days/weeks, because school is starting and its attendant responsibilities are many._

_Hope everything's well and that I'll be back soon with an update. I'm aiming for tomorrow, but my aim isn't always so good._

_Yours,_

_Delilah_


	10. Twenty

_Good morning, everyone! Happy Saturday! I'm sorry I didn't update yesterday; we took my mother-in-law out for her birthday and we didn't get home 'til late. Hopefully, after so many heavy chapters filled with death and guilt and violence, a little romance will balance things out._

_Special thanks to everyone who's reviewed this story so far, followed it and added it to their favorites. _

_I am not Suzanne Collins, so I don't own The Hunger Games. _

* * *

Twenty

I'm twenty years old the day he tells me that he loves me.

At first, I don't know what to say. In the past few years, love has become a lot more complicated than it seemed when I was just a little girl. Love could mean many things.

"You…what?" I ask, stalling for time. I need to process what I just heard. Some days, this takes a little while. My nerves aren't what they once were.

Beetee isn't thrown off by my less-than-thrilled reaction. It's like he can see right through my face, see the gears turning in my head, see me trying to work out the implications of what he's telling me. So instead of raging and storming at me, or walking away, hurt and dejected, he merely repeats himself with the calm, unruffled air of someone giving me the weather forecast.

"I love you," he reiterates matter-of-factly, as though this earth-shattering revelation were a routine bit of well-known information, as indisputable as the sum of two and two.

I don't understand. How could he love someone like me? How could _anyone_, for that matter? I'm broken. Tarnished. I don't finish my sentences, or even my _thoughts_ at times. I'm too short and too skinny, even after two years of rich victors' food. I'm scared of the dark, like a child, because ever since I won the Hunger Games the dark has merely served as cover for the tormenting spirits of the tributes I'd killed, or watched die, or was unable to save.

What would people say if Beetee were to take me out somewhere and try to show me off? People look at me funny here, now—they look askance at me, because they don't know what to expect. Which Wiress are they going to get today? The coldblooded killer who came out on top of a field of twenty-four teenagers, all armed to the teeth and out for blood? The unstable girl who scarcely spoke at all for two months after coming back from the Capitol? The world's most useless mentor, who hasn't brought home a living tribute in the two years she's tried to do so?

I come from nothing. My family went hungry for much of my childhood, and my newfound riches are blood money, won for surviving where others did not. I'm not beautiful, no matter what my mother would say to the contrary if she were still alive. Anyone who's seen some of those tributes from District One wouldn't dream of calling me beautiful, or even pretty. I'm a deep thinker but a terrible conversationalist, and what good are thoughts when you can't get them out of your own head? I'm shy around people I don't know.

Besides, I'm damaged goods. I'm the Capitol's whore, and every so often I get a call and we both know what it means—that someone else has a claim to stake, and _I_ am that claim. What man would want a woman with so much mileage on her? Indeed, it astounds me that even my buyers find something to like in me. It must be the air of vulnerability, so desirable in a paid slave of sorts.

"W—why?" I stammer blankly, focused on the twenty or so reasons why Beetee shouldn't love me, why this is a mistake, and a mistake I wouldn't expect of someone as smart as him. It doesn't matter how I may feel…

It doesn't matter that I feel safe when he's with me, even though I feel safe nowhere else anymore.

It doesn't matter that he's the only one who can make me smile.

It doesn't matter that he's spent the past two years trying to put me back together, even where others would have given up long ago and I wouldn't have blamed them in the least.

_None_ of this matters. There are a million good reasons why he shouldn't love me, and I'm determined that he see this before one or both of us get hurt.

"Why not?" he replies, challenging me to say all the reasons I've been mulling over in my head, knowing that I'd never be able to give voice to them all.

"Because…because I…" I begin, struggling to string my impossibly long list of faults into some sort of cohesive pattern, because it's imperative that I make Beetee see reason.

"You can't give me a single good reason why I shouldn't love you," he adds with a sly smile, and I think I resent him a little right now, because I have a million reasons, but I just don't know where to begin.

"I'm not beautiful," I say shortly, and his eyes widen in surprise. "You're not?" he asks, genuinely puzzled. He stares openly at my face, as though he's making a study for a painting, then peers at me under his glasses in a gesture that is so quintessentially Beetee, comparing the view to what he'd seen a minute ago. "Hmm," he murmurs, "I suppose I'd better get these replaced." He takes off his glasses and looks down at them in his hand, mildly discontented. "The prescription must not be strong enough, because I've been wearing this pair for a while, and I look at you every single day, and every single day you've looked beautiful to me, so there must be something I'm missing."

Momentarily stunned, I try a different approach. "I…I can't…I'm not…"

He doesn't interrupt me or look the least bit irritated at the delay; instead, he waits patiently for me to work my way through the sentence.

"I'm…damaged," I finally confess. He nods slowly, taking in all the possible implications of this terrible admission.

"I'd be worried if you weren't," he says, looking grave. "After all you've been through, if you weren't a little damaged, I'd be afraid you weren't human." He pauses, and the silence between us is a chasm filled with words unspoken. "And besides," he adds at long last, just when I start to wonder if there's nothing left to say between us, "I'm damaged, too. But maybe together, we can be almost whole again."

He's still not giving up, and the tenacity I'd come to admire in so many other parts of our lives together is driving me to distraction because every counter-argument Beetee offers me makes it so much harder for me to reject him, for our own good. Because he's got me wondering, is it really for the best that we both be alone?

"I'm…"

"Yes, _what_ else are you, Wiress?" He interrupts me this time, and I'm taken aback for a moment. This isn't like Beetee, who either waits for me to explain myself or else gently finishes my sentences as if he can read my mind.

"Tell you what—I'll _tell_ you what you are. You're beautiful, with your pretty blue eyes and your radiant smile, but you're too shy to realize it. You're smart, but you feel so guilty about outsmarting the other tributes in your Games that you're afraid of your own intelligence. You're brave enough to face every new day as a chance to change the world. You're kind and compassionate and think of everyone else before yourself. You've got so many special gifts that I count myself lucky just having met you," Beetee finishes, before adding, "And I'll tell you one more thing to add to all this: You are completely and indisputably the love of my life."

I don't know how to respond to this, because there's something else troubling me, even as he chips away at all my feelings of inadequacy.

"But I'm scared," I whisper, because even saying the words aloud is terrifying. Saying it brings the feelings to life and makes them feel so much more tangible.

"Scared?"

"Scared of…what could happen," I try to explain. My mother loved us, and she died. My sister loves Bolton and me so much that she surrendered her childhood to become our surrogate mother. And those strangers in the Capitol…they call it 'making love,' what they bring us there for, but 'hate' is a better word for what I feel every time I'm alone with one of them. Or maybe 'anger.' Or 'contaminated;' that's a good word to describe how I feel on the train ride home every single time. But on second thought, maybe 'love' is a _fine_ word to use in these cases, because after all these years, love has become so tainted by sadness in my life that it can't inspire feelings of joy in me. No butterflies in my stomach; nothing but a dull realization that even something as good as love must come flavored by life's bitterness.

"I'm scared, too. But less so when I'm with you, because you make me feel strong enough to take on anything. I promise, nothing bad will ever come of loving me, because I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe and happy. I'll always be there to make you smile and dry your tears and listen to you sing while you work and you think I'm not listening."

He even notices the singing. Damn. This is going to be harder than I thought, because I'm running out of reasons to send him away…

"Now, I'm going to say this one more time, and I want you to take your time and _really_ think about it, whether you're willing to take a chance on someone who's every bit as broken as you, every bit as guilty as you, every bit as lost as you are and completely devoted to you, no matter what happens. _I love you, Wiress._"

Twenty is how old I am when he tells me he loves me and even though I'm scared, I find the courage to love him back. Being a Hunger Games victor is so lonely; I feel like I am watching the world, full of normal people, from behind a thick wall of glass. Impenetrable. But Beetee is trapped like me, trapped on the wrong side of the glass, and having someone there beside me, who understands me, who values me more than I value myself, means more than I could ever express.

* * *

_Sigh. Love is complicated. When my husband first told me he loved me, I had a similar, rather shell-shocked reaction. 'What should I say?' Sometimes it just takes a little time to process such monumental news...even when you aren't struggling with the aftermath of the Hunger Games... _

_But you know what's not complicated? Reviewing! I start a new semester of grad school this week, so your reviews might be the only bright spot on the horizon for me for a little while. _

_We're now halfway through the story! I won't say when the next update will be, because I'm not entirely sure myself. But I will try to update ASAP, I promise._

_Until next time,_

_Delilah_


	11. Two

_Back for more, I see! Don't worry; I'll keep it brief._

_Thank you to **KTstories and stuff** for your thoughtful review and as usual, to all those who are following this story._

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Not even my apartment. _

* * *

Two

Two. It's the number of kids I'd hoped to have someday. That was a long time ago, though. That is, before the Games came and changed it all.

Normally, I wouldn't give this topic a second thought, but not today. Yesterday, Electra's daughter was born. I am her godmother. And now, motherhood weighs heavy on my mind.

* * *

When I was a little girl, I'd watch my parents taking care of us. I'd see how my father would come home, exhausted from a long day at work in the automotive factory. He'd collapse into a chair at the kitchen table, his face drawn and tired, his clothes stained with grease and oil and we'd run to him, begging him to play with us, just for a minute. And even though my mother would say, "Give your father a minute; can't you see he's tired?" he'd haul himself to his feet and he'd scoop the three of us into his arms and carry us off to play while my mother got dinner on the table. No matter how difficult or tiring his day was, he'd never tell us "Not tonight." Never.

I always noticed the little things. The way my mother always crept into our room once she thought we were asleep. It was the same every night. She'd pause in the doorway for a moment, hovering on the threshold, watching us in our beds while I struggled to appear convincingly asleep, all the while trying to observe my mother through the dark and my almost-closed eyes. Then she'd tiptoe into our room, taking careful steps around my brother's kicked-off shoes in the middle of the floor. She'd lean over Electra and brush a few errant strands of her dark, curly hair away from her face, serene and young-looking in the moonlight. Electra was always very vain about her hair; she was the only one of us who had natural curls, and she considered it her great claim to beauty. Awake, she wouldn't suffer anyone to mess it up, but while Electra slept, my mother could stroke her daughter's dark hair to her heart's content. After kissing Electra gently on the cheek, my mother would make her way to the other side of the bed, to me. She would crouch down beside the bed and stroke my cheek, gently, with just her fingertips. She'd kiss my forehead and whisper, "I love you" in the dark before crossing, silent as a shadow, to my brother's bedside. Bolton was a live wire during the day; it must have been so strange for my mother to see him so still every night, so it was natural that she'd stand beside his bed for a few long moments, listening to his slow, gentle breathing, before running a hand over his head, kissing him goodnight and tiptoeing out of the room.

I fixed these moments in my memory, so that one day when I was a mother, I'd remember just how to teach my children to tie their shoes, how to bandage their cuts and how to kiss away their tears when they had bad dreams.

* * *

Before the reaping, I decided that I wanted two kids someday. A boy and a girl, who I could tell stories to and cradle in my arms and tuck into bed. Two kids who I'd see off to school and help with their homework.

I wanted a son, who I would teach to dance when he reached the age where he'd want to impress all the girls—girls who I'd watch on the street with him from our apartment window, wondering if they were good enough for him. A boy who I'd chase around the living room, laughing because he thinks he can escape me on his chubby little toddler legs. I would scold him when the lights suddenly go out because he decided to test what he'd learned in school about circuits on the fuse box in our hallway, but secretly glow inside with pride.

I wanted a daughter, with my sister's beautiful black curls and my blue eyes. A girl who'd beg me for a few coins to buy hair ribbons and who'd hesitantly ask me about boys. I'd help her with her science projects, her hair tied back in a kerchief just like how I wear mine when I'm working. She'd win awards for her brilliance at school and I'd sit in the back of the crowd when the mayor presented her with her certificates, overjoyed that this prodigy is all mine. Someday, I'd zip her into her dress at her wedding, and maybe I'd cry as we stood on the steps of the Justice Building for photographs, seeing her radiant with happiness.

Everything changed the moment my name was announced at the Reaping.

Either way, my future children's lives ended that day, before they even began. In all likelihood, I'd be dead in a week or so and therefore lost all possibility of even living long enough to have children. The future held only certain death, and the family I needed to focus on was the one I had to say my goodbyes to, rather than the imaginary one I'd created for myself in some alternate future where I was alive and happy.

Things didn't quite work out the way I'd predicted. I survive the Games and come back to District Three as a victor, bringing the living population of our Victor's Village up to the unforeseen total of three. So many things change when I come back. Suddenly, I have warm clothes and as much food as I could ever want to eat. I have money to buy delicacies like something called 'ice cream,' which I discovered in the Capitol and now have a secret weakness for. Medicine that makes it easier for me to breathe for the first time in years. I have a house so big that I could probably fit everyone I know in it comfortably. I have unlimited leisure time in which to tinker with my inventions and do pretty much whatever I want.

These are just the things that have changed on the surface. None of these superficial little changes would stop me from having a family someday, if I so desire. But what really changed was _me_.

Post- Games, I am no longer innocent. No longer optimistic. And at last, I am convinced that I understand what my parents had tried, with varying degrees of success, to hide from us kids for all those years.

At last, I understand why my mother cried every year on our birthdays. Why my father could never chat with us at the breakfast table on Reaping Day, even when we were too small to really understand why we were off from school that day.

They were _scared,_ scared of losing us. Scared to love us too much, perhaps, only to have to say a premature goodbye.

They were terrified of losing us to the Games, and it poisoned even the happy times with an air of melancholy we, as children, couldn't fully perceive. The slow torture of watching Electra or Bolton or me being gutted by a burly teenager with a sword, or starving in some man-made forest, or collapsing on a desert plain from dehydration, all on TV…the list of fears they must have had for us is endless. How many ways could they be forced to watch us die, the children they'd cradled and hummed lullabies to and raised from the day we were born? The children they loved so intensely that even the fear of the Games couldn't keep them from bringing us into this world?

But my parents were stronger than I am. Stronger and, to a point, luckier, because they were never Hunger Games victors, whose children tend to turn up in the arena more often than what can be strictly written off as coincidence. Sure, Claudius Templesmith goes on about how _that family's just unlucky_, about how _no one could've predicted such a thing happening_, but it's common knowledge that the Gamemakers relish the drama of it all.

And so, after the Games I just know that I can't go through with it. The terrible possibility of someday having to mentor _my own child_ in the Hunger Games, only to watch him or her die at the end of a Career's cruel knife point…well, I just can't face it.

Maybe that will change someday. After all, I myself have changed remarkably in the past year alone. But for now, I know that I won't be ready to face all that being a mother in Panem entails.

* * *

_Wiress seems very predisposed to changing her mind, back and forth on things...at least in this story. Still, I wonder if she's willing to budge on such a big decision..._

_Hope everyone enjoyed today's update. I'm trying to be brief with my ANs because I've got a whole pile of work to finish. I must confess, I'm not entirely sure of the order I want to post the next couple of chapters in. One of them is very dark, I must warn you; the other, much less so. But don't worry, there's a happy one after those two. _

_In the meantime, while I'm debating chapter order, please review. I asked nicely. _

_Hope everyone's doing well as a new school year begins,_

_Delilah_


	12. Zero

_Hello, everyone! I'm sorry it's been a while since I last posted, but the first week of __school is always tough. That, and I didn't get any reviews at all last time, so I wasn't sure if anyone had read my previous update, which led me to postpone putting up this one._

_Today's chapter brings us to a very dark place. Please don't hold it against me; I promise a happy one to balance it out in the near future. However, this one was necessary in order to fully appreciate events in later chapters. I just hope I don't leave any of you depressed._

_I am not Suzanne Collins. I own nothing._

_**Warning:** This chapter contains adult subject matter, including depiction of sexual assualt. It is not intended for younger readers. Your discretion is advised. _

* * *

Zero

Zero. Zero. Zero. The estimate on the slip of paper the pawnbroker slides across the counter to me has a number on it, a number ending in three zeros, a larger number than I ever would have expected or predicted.

"You still want to sell?" he asks, his voice lilting in its peculiar Capitol accent, his eyes drinking in the sight of me, absorbed in my thoughts and the row of zeroes on the paper. I look up, resolute. "Yes," I say firmly.

The pawnbroker picks up the necklace and balances it gently on his long, tapering fingers, heavy with rings and ending in rainbow-hued nails. Its flawless gemstones glitter in the artificial light directed down over the glass counter-cases filled with jewelry, ornate watches and crystal. Here, in the Capitol, the lavish life is so encouraged that nearly everyone is in debt. An establishment like this probably does pretty well off the backs of those hoping to mitigate some of that debt.

"Cleaning house, are you?" the pawnbroker asks with a sly grin as he lovingly lays the necklace in his display window and counts out the money for me. "Memento of an old boyfriend?"

I cringe involuntarily and pull the scarf I've wrapped around my hair lower over my face, fearful that he might recognize me from television. "You could say that," I agree.

The pawnbroker hands me more money than I've ever held in my own hands before, and I carefully settle it in my pocket, where it weighs on my mind all day. On the train ride back, then at the station…finally, almost home at last, I take it out, wrapped in a handkerchief that's neatly knotted, and leave it on the back steps of a forbidding-looking cement building. It's the automotive factory where my father worked. Let it bring some happiness to some poor worker, to atone for the sorrow it brought me. Either way, I don't want it in my house.

* * *

The necklace was a gift from a man in the Capitol. He's not like the others. The others call me once, maybe twice. I know with a dark sort of satisfaction that once I close that hotel door behind me, I'll most likely never see them again. But this one is different. He has an appetite for me, a habit that I can't quite understand. He calls it a romance, what we share, but that word isn't nearly sordid enough to describe our arrangement in my opinion. What he wants isn't so much to romance me as to possess me entirely, to have me love and need no one else but him, to have me belong to him and no other. He does this under the guise of a thoughtful and devoted lover, but that's not nearly enough to obliterate the fact that he pays good money for my company and that, if he _really_ loved me, he'd set me free.

The day before I visit the pawnbroker, I arrive in the Capitol. The train ride in was torturous: my stomach set in tight knots, the nervous buzzing in my mind betraying the forced calm I've imposed on my body. I trust myself to speak to no one, because I can't guarantee what I may say.

Too soon, I'm at the mercy of my prep team, who are complicit in this travesty. They are recruited to make me, in the words of none other than our revered President, 'presentable.' It's the same logic they must apply when they dress up tributes in layers of glamor and luxury before sending them off to their deaths. The difference is that my shame will be private rather than public, and the only death tonight will be that of my dignity, which I fight so hard to resurrect every time I get home from one of these little outings, to little avail.

"And…done!" says Felix, directing me towards a mirror. I look at myself dispassionately, because it really doesn't feel like I' looking in a mirror at all. It feels like I'm looking at a stranger, because the woman in the provocative-looking black satin dress and the painfully high heels can't be me. So maybe that means this isn't really happening to me at all, but to some unfortunate stranger. Maybe if I keep telling myself this, I'll come to actually believe it.

* * *

Tonight, he takes me out to a restaurant that's situated in an observatory at the top of a glittering glass building that seems to me to be made of cut crystal. He orders for both of us, because who am I to call the shots here? He orders red wine and keeps motioning for the servers to refill my glass, and even though I don't really like red wine much I drink it, hoping the alcohol will somehow dull the pain of what's to come. The tart red liquid tastes to me of bitterness. When the food arrives, he laughs at me as I pick at it noncommittally.

"What's the matter, baby?" he teases good-naturedly, "worried about your figure?" I decline to mention that I'm so filled with dread and resentment and frustration that I've completely lost my appetite.

After this, he decides to play the doting suitor and places the choicest morsels from my plate directly into my moth, using his own fork. I'm struggling to keep it all down. At one point, he whips out a flat velvet box and places it impressively on the table in front of me.

"It's our anniversary, darling," he coos. "A whole year, already!"

Oh, but don't I _know_ it. I sit there, staring blankly at the box, wondering what would possess him to ever think that I'd want to open it, to see what's inside. He thinks I'm overcome at his generosity, though—is this for _me_? A poor little girl from the districts? Oh, you _shouldn't_ have!—because he takes it upon himself to open it for me. A magnificent necklace lies on the bed of velvet. Its precious stones sparkle in the dim light of the supper club. I gasp, involuntarily, because I can't begin to calculate its value and how long it could sustain an entire family back home.

He reaches out, plucks the necklace from its case, and fastens it around my neck with a flourish. I reach up to touch it. I feel like a dog whose master has just bought it a new collar.

When we leave the restaurant, he takes my arm and escorts me to the hotel. I know it well. Sometimes, I see other victors there, hovering uncertainly a step behind their 'dates' in the lobby as they check-in. "Just the one night?" the concierge always asks with a knowing smirk, and I can't help blushing every time. I feel like such a whore, even though I know that it's not my fault. Tonight, though, we are alone in the lobby. If anyone I know is here, they've already gone to work. My work, however, is just beginning.

A room key clutched between his fingers, the Capitolean takes me by the arm again, gripping me just above the elbow, steering me into a glass elevator. It's got plush carpeting and a teardrop chandelier. The elevator whooshes upward with indecent haste—everything in the Capitol moves fast, it seems—and slides to a halt on the fifteenth floor. I feel like I left my stomach behind somewhere around the fourth.

Each step I take down the long hallway seems to echo in my ears. _I don't want to—you can't make me—someone, please—_in my head, I'm screaming out for help, hoping against hope that someone, _anyone_, will come to my rescue. No one ever does.

"And…here we are!" the Capitolean crows, swinging open the door to the hotel room with his arms outstretched, as if he's presenting it to me as his gift. He's had someone come in and scatter rose petals. It makes me want to cover my eyes and hide.

Overhead, the lights dim and I wonder where he obtained the remote that controls them so fast. But he's already moved on from the lights. He creeps up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. Through the satin sheen of the dress, I can feel his hands running over my body. After a while, they grab me firmly by the waist and he turns me around to face him. He's a lot taller than me. He bends down and kisses me deeply, and I feel nothing. Nothing but shame at the way I let the Capitol use me like a cheap whore…or rather, like an expensive one.

His arms wrap around me like suffocating branches and with every step he takes forward, I'm force to take one back, closer to the enormous bed piled high with plump decorative pillows. It's bigger than any bed I've ever seen back home, but it could be the size of my living room and it would still seem too small to share with a man like this Capitolean. I feel its plush mattress hit the back of my legs and I know I've run out of room. There's no turning back now.

The Capitolean seems to be in quite a rush. I guess he's been building up to this moment all night, maybe even since our last rendezvous. His hands have found the zipper at the back of my dress and I hear its low purr as he pulls it down. No longer tight, the black dress falls in a sad, discarded little pile around my ankles.

"_Stockings_, too, baby? What, are you trying to keep me out? 'Cause it's driving me crazy," he chortles. It's a sad attempt at a joke, and rather crude, and pointless as well, because we both know, deep down, that I couldn't keep him out if I wanted to. Which I _do_, with all my heart, though he's convinced himself that I look forward to our 'dates' as much as he does. With a blind self-assurance one finds only in the Capitol, this man has tricked himself into believing that I am as infatuated with him as he is with me.

Still bemused at this new addition to my wardrobe, but nonetheless visibly excited by it—are nylons some sort of aphrodisiac in the Capitol?—he unclips them impatiently from the ridiculous lacy garter belt they nearly had to wrestle me into. I hear a low pulling sound and am certain that one of them has ripped, and I wonder vaguely whether I'll have to pay for the damage.

His preoccupation with the nylons vanished, the Capitolean grips me firmly by the waist and lifts me right off the ground, onto the bed. I squeeze my eyes shut. _Think of something else, Wiress,_ I plead with myself. _Anything but this. Pretend you're anywhere but here._

He's tossing his clothes behind him now, crawling closer to me, his fingers tracing the lace trim of my new, fancy underclothes. They give me a new set every time I come here. Today's are black, like the dress. I wonder if someone actually gets paid to choose what color underwear I'll wear each time.

"You know I love you," he murmurs, trailing kisses that burn and freeze at the same time down past my collarbone. "Say you love me too. Say it!"

The words seem to stick in my throat, because it's hard to commit to such a big lie here on the spot. The others are so much easier, because they take their pleasure and then they're done. They never really try to _talk_ to me. But this man, he wants more than just sex; he wants me to think about him, to dwell on him, even to _need_ him. The only thing I need right now, short of a miracle, is a good distraction.

"Don't keep me waiting," he pants breathlessly, his hands working off the last remaining articles of my clothes as he waits for my response. I debate telling him the truth—that _no_, I could never love someone who uses me like this—but I'm afraid he'll hurt me if I do. _Think of your family. Mother always said it was your job to help protect them. Do your job, Wiress. _In the end, cowardice wins out.

"I love you, too," I whisper, fearing that everyone I really _do_ love can hear my betrayal, and in this moment, I vow to cast aside this word, 'love,' because if I can cheapen it so by saying it to this monster, then it no longer holds any meaning to me.

My lie is greeted with a groan of approval from the Capitolean. Pinned beneath him, I squeeze my eyes shut because my body's fighting him, determined not to make it easy for this invader, even though my mind's already accepted the inevitability of surrender. I feel all tight and rigid, like I'm trying to lock up my body against his assault. But he's bigger and stronger and heavier than me, and I'm no match for him. The result of all this is a feeling like he's tearing through my insides with every movement.

I vaguely wonder if I'm bleeding. It happened the first couple of times, but I don't usually have to worry about it anymore. Still, I feel so raw and sore that I can't help wondering if he's somehow injured me. Perhaps it's serious and I'll die here, all alone, without my clothes...it's a chilling thought; the fruit of a mind that's anchored in a very dark place tonight. I make a mental note to check as soon as he's asleep and I can sneak away, and consign myself to praying that I haven't stained the bedsheets, because sleeping in a pool of my own blood is not an appealing prospect.

The Capitolean pulls me closer to him until the complete line of our bodies is in contact, skin to skin. His fingernails dig into my shoulders and the small of my back. I feel goosebumps forming on my flesh, because no matter how hard I try to rise above this humiliation and escape within the safety of my head, this degree of intimacy makes it that much more difficult.

Some nights, they finish up pretty fast. Once, I was lucky enough to get a 'date'—a young man around my own age; I wondered why he was out buying victors when he could be charming girls in a café somewhere—who was snoring beside me within no more than twenty or thirty minutes. Tonight I'm not that lucky, though. It goes on for hours—the discomfort, the spasms of pain, the feel of his heavy body on top of mine, crushing me down into the mattress. I wonder if he _likes_ the feeling of being able to pin me down, to hurt me, and if it's precisely my vulnerability that led him to me, rather than other victors who are more beautiful than I. I suppose I'll never know.

He keeps at it for hours, forcing me into positions designed for acrobats, and even though it's dark in the room, I know my cheeks are burning red with shame. I feel thoroughly dishonored and very, _very_ cheap, but most of all, I feel uncomfortable. Every so often, there'll be a night when my body betrays my pride and actually lets me feel some pleasure, completely against my will, and later on I'll feel sick, because the idea that I may have actually _enjoyed_ it disgusts me. But tonight, I feel nothing but total discomfort and even pain because I wasn't ready when he started and I never succeeded into tricking myself into thinking I was feeling amorous tonight. I keep wishing that he'll tire out and it'll be over, and after a while I can't stop myself from whimpering in agony because there's no end in sight and he, groaning in pleasure, seems to mistake my cries for cries of ecstasy and keeps going. _Why me_, I wonder, _what have I done to deserve this?_ I firmly ignore the thoughts of five dead tributes that rush forth in answer, because isn't that what the ceaseless guilt's for? Does my penance really require _this_ degradation, too?

When he's finally done, I conceal my sigh of relief and tell myself _okay, now he'll go to sleep and leave you in peace_. I steel myself every time with the knowledge that eventually, the man will roll over, drift off into a sated sleep, and I will be free to tiptoe out of the room, lock myself in the bathroom and cry until I run out of tears, all in complete privacy and safety. I don't know what would happen to me if one of them caught me crying. It's only happened once, because I couldn't make it to the bathroom before the tears started, but my client that night was a sadist who'd whipped me with his belt and took my tears as a compliment.

But no, how could I forget that _this one's_ not like the others? That he imagines me as his lover rather than his paid slave? And do lovers retreat to the bathroom to cower after a passionate night together? Well, I'm no expert, but I'd guess not. Anyway, _he_ doesn't think so. Just as I wrench the covers up to cover my body—because I'm painfully embarrassed by my lack of clothes—he moves over beside me, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his skin and his breath on the back of my neck. I turn away so he won't see the tears welling up in my eyes. _Think of your family. You did it to keep them safe,_ I reason. _Think of Electra's kids. You wouldn't want anything to happen to them._

I feel sore and tired, and strangely empty inside. Softly, I whimper into the pillow. Beside me, I can hear him whispering, "Shh," hushing me like you'd do to a fretful baby.

The man from the Capitol strokes my cheek gently, like a lover would do. He plants furtive kisses on my neck and murmurs a lot of nonsense that I barely hear. He wraps his arms around me, huddled in a miserable little ball, and pulls me closer to him. Still, I face resolutely toward the wall, determined not to let him see me cry, my jaw clenched tight to keep from crying out, my hands clenched protectively on the blankets gathered under my arms to shield me from his gaze. He brushes my hair back off my face and it is _this_ that finally undoes me, this gesture that my mother, and later Electra, and _still_ later Beetee would use to soothe me when I'm distressed. He has no right to do this! Not him! For the first time tonight, I feel completely at his mercy and completely violated. He's finally found a way to shatter my defenses. My tears silently hit the pillow, like cold pearls.

It seems like forever before his deep, even breathing convinces me that he's asleep, but it's probably really no more than an hour at most. Heart hammering, I slip out from under the arm he's got thrown possessively around my waist, like some sort of human restraint. Every creak of the bed or the floor threatens to give me away. Silently, I gather up my clothes from the carpet and steal through the darkness to the bathroom.

The hotel bathroom is a dazzling expanse of white tile and gleaming metal fixtures. It's probably bigger than our old apartment back home. There's a state-of-the-art shower and an old-fashioned bathtub—the kind with high sides and clawed feet—and a sink set into a counter of priceless marble, piled high with aromatic soaps and little glass bottles of colorful liquids.

Bolting the door closed behind me, I put on my underclothes and step back to examine the remainder of my clothing. The smooth surface of the black dress is inexplicably wrinkle-free, even though it's lain in a heap on the floor for hours now. It seems like nothing in the Capitol—not even the fabrics—can be allowed to show wrinkles, signs of age and wear. The stockings, though, have a long tear in them, from when he pulled them off. Either way, I wouldn't be able to get any rest in this getup, and no one had the foresight to give me any pajamas. They probably figured I wouldn't need them.

The hotel's left a couple of impeccably white cotton bathrobes hanging in the bathroom. They're so gleaming white that they actually hurt my eyes. Without thinking, I remove one from its hanger and pull it on. It's not as soft as I'd expected—truth be told, it's actually rather rough-feeling—but I cinch the belt tight around my waist and pull it closed more tightly at the neck. While doing this, I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror.

I look pretty haggard. My hair, which I've recently cut to about an inch above the shoulder (much to the distress of my prep team), hangs limply in a rumpled mess. Some of the back pieces stick to the nape of my neck. My eyes are getting red equally from crying and from struggling to hold back tears. A small bruise is forming at the base of my neck, just under the bathrobe's folded-over collar. In the merciless light of the bathroom, I look deathly pale, weary and utterly wretched. A young woman with the sorrows of the entire world weighing on her shoulders.

Unable to resist any more, I sink to the cold tile floor, my back against the ornate bathtub. I draw my knees up to my chest, wrap my arms protectively around my legs and weep softly.

* * *

Zero, zero, zero. The number on the receipt the pawnbroker handed me shows a sum larger than any I've ever possessed at one time. And yet, once you look past that first number, all you see is zeroes. Nothingness. Completely meaningless, like the trinket that earned me this money and the suffering that earned me the trinket. Like what my life's become.

* * *

_And there you have it. Well, I hope all my readers are well and are _not_ experiencing the weight of the world on their shoulders, like poor Wiress is today. I also want to wish a happy new school year to all the teachers, students and school workers out there (yes, I know many places have been in school for a couple of weeks now; I think we're among the last school systems to start each year). It's been a rough first week back-due to both work and other things-and I think I managed to transfer a lot of my own stress and anxiety into this rather dark chapter. By the end of the week, though, I'd managed to work through a lot of what was bothering me and was able to feel hopeful again. It's a wonderful feeling, and I intend to enjoy it as long as I can, while it lasts. One thing that would really help keep me feeling optimistic would be hearing from some of my readers. So please review! In the meantime, I hope I can get back to update soon. It's a vastly more appealing option when you weigh it against alternatives like creating homework and planning lessons. _

_That being said, it's time for me to be a good girl and start work on the aforementioned lessons. Have a wonderful weekend!_

_Delilah_


	13. Ten

_Good evening! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend-or, to be more precise,_ is_ enjoying their weekend (it's not over yet, hooray!) After the week I had at work, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed mine, even when we were rained in yesterday, because there was something indescribably relaxing about sitting in my favorite chair in the living room with a cup of tea and my big gray cat curled up in my lap, watching the rain on the windows. _

_Thank you to vapiddreamscape for reviewing chapter 12. I truly enjoyed reading your thoughts on the chapter! And, as promised, no one dies or suffers any kind of assault in this chapter. The next one can even qualify as 'happy'. Hooray again!_

_I own nothing, as always._

* * *

Ten

I come up with new ideas at least ten times a day.

It's true. Beetee laughs at me; he says my mind's always going at a mile a minute. Sometimes, I imagine he's right because I can practically _feel_ my brain working away at something. It'll keep me up at night, because while my body will be still and quiet under the covers, my thoughts and ideas will be flashing through my mind's eye, my pulse pounding in my ears like a drumbeat. Sometimes I'll even drag myself out of bed for a sip of cold water because I'm scared my brain will overheat like the factory machines and either shut down or spontaneously combust.

Some of my ideas are simply idle musings, ones that I'm not even intent on pursuing an answer to. "If District Thirteen's supposed to have retreated underground," I ask Beetee one day, giving voice to a popular urban legend, "then how do they have nuclear weapons? Nuclear reactors are built _above_ ground, and even if they have bombs from the Dark Days, nuclear weapons deteriorate over time. What's to stop the Capitol from marching in there and taking over?"

Beetee thinks about this for a moment, then replies, "Maybe the fact that Thirteen's supposed to be a barren wasteland devoid of all life and they don't want to risk exposing themselves to leftover radiation all to disprove an urban legend."

Other times, the ideas that pop into my head out of nowhere concern inventions. Inventing things is not only my official, Capitol-sanctioned talent; it's also my hobby, my job...and at times, my salvation.

I start inventing things to keep my mind and my hands busy, because after the Games, just sitting in my new house is driving me crazy. I feel restless and jumpy, and every minute I'm not occupied with something, the knowledge of what I'd done and what I'd been through threatens to overwhelm me, like waves breaking on the shore in District Four (it's funny; ever since my Victory Tour visit, I've been using a lot of District 4-esque similes and metaphors in my conversation; I can't quite put a finger on what it was there that made such an impression on me). I feel nervous just looking at my idle hands in my lap, because I wonder what keeps me from using them for some nefarious purpose. It's not like I haven't done so before. If I don't find some way to use them for good, I might hurt someone I love, or maybe just give in to my ever-present despair and hurt myself.

So I start tinkering with things around the house, trying to make them more efficient. I start making sketches of devices I'd dreamed up in an off moment—some practical, some not so much. It keeps me busy, and it's an interesting-enough pastime to discuss for the cameras whenever I'm due for an interview.

After a while, it occurs to me that _this_ is it—_this_ is how I can leave my mark on Panem, leave it a better place then I'd found it. My legacy will not be five dead teenagers. It will be the help I've brought countless people throughout the nation.

All I want to do is make life easier for people like my parents, who worked in that factory every day with so little to show for it. Honest, everyday people who want nothing more than a comfortable living and security for their children. I can do this. By tackling the little problems that make a workday so difficult, that grind away at a person's resolve, maybe I can somehow reach out to these people and give them a chance to help themselves. This drives me to push myself further, to complete as many of the half-formed ideas that I sketch out as possible, to see projects through to fruition.

Ten is the number of patents I hold in my name, for devices that I created and the Capitol stole. I suppose there's something poetic about it—the Capitol's stolen just about everything I ever cared about, so why not the fruit of my labor? And me—I've been a tool of the Capitol before; first in one way, then another. Some higher authority must have seen it as fitting that I should continue the rest of my life in this capacity. But that doesn't stop me from trying to fight the flow of the tide and do something rebellious and selfless and maybe even a little brave.

Take the stitching device, for example. It's supposed to be patent #11, if I ever finish it. Think of the time it'll save in District Eight, if the tailors and seamstresses and textile mill workers don't have to worry about choosing the wrong strength of thread, only to have it break and have to start the garment all over. Time saved means an increase in production, which means lower prices and higher profits. Perhaps then the workers will be rewarded with a salary increase, and their quality of life would be so much better! Better food, warmer clothes, fewer kids taking out tesserae…

I explain this to Beetee, the words tumbling out in a confused rush, my face aglow with the endless possibilities of this new brainstorm, the ways it can help so many people, and he smiles at me—a smile that's both warm and a little melancholy at the same time. I know what's bothering him. He's thinking I'm sweet but naïve; a starry-eyed dreamer who thinks she can fix the world with a screwdriver and a handful of wire. He doesn't want to be the one to point out that the Capitol would quickly appropriate any surplus profit that would result from my improvements to the garment industry. I know this as well as he does, but I'm not ready to admit it yet. Ten times a day, or so, I try and bring myself back to reality, but to do so would be to squash the last bit of hope I have for the people of this land, and without hope, we're all lost.

Despair is a passive emotion. It is therefore unbearable torture for someone with an active mind. I refuse to slow down enough to sink into the deep ocean that is despair, because I can't swim, and so I fear I'd never escape and drown, helpless, in my own sorrow. I cannot allow this to happen. And so, ten times a day, I tell myself to keep going, that the next one's going to do it, going to fix everything.

And with every new invention, I tell myself, despite the odds, over and over that _this_ will be the one that slips past the Capitol's all-seeing gaze and makes a difference for someone out there, someone who needs looking after.

* * *

_Well, I hope you all enjoyed this update where everyone emerges unscathed and with a little bit of hope. Now, the next chapter's a long one, so please do me the honor of reviewing as I make my final edits and get it all ready for you to enjoy. As promised, it won't be a sad one. _

_All the best,_

_Delilah_


	14. Four

_Hi everyone! I couldn't wait another day... _

_My heartfelt thanks go out to **Pinkbookworm7, vapiddreamscape** and **KTstoriesandstuff** for your wonderful reviews of my last chapter. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, because I certainly was glad to hear from you! So glad, that I made a point of updating today when I should've been doing my homework for grad school. That's okay. Only my husband and the cat know that I'm taking an unauthorized break...oops..._

_And now, on to today's story. I'm not Suzanne Collins, so I own none of the characters, locations or details within._

* * *

Four

_Four_ is the number of times Beetee tries to persuade me to 'make it official.' That's his way of sidestepping that loaded word: marriage.

"Wiress," he begins, and I sense he's about to start in on it again. It's taken us eight years to reach this stage in our communication with each other, but we can pretty much read each other's minds. And right now, my intuition is pointing right to the imminent commencement of Proposal #5.

"Not again," I interrupt, before he can even get started. Every time he asks me, he's got this whole prepared speech, and each time it's harder to get him to stop once he's already started because Beetee is smart enough to learn from his own mistakes, and so each successive marriage proposal comes with more and more counterarguments attached, all of which he employs as weapons against my doubts and defenses.

* * *

The first time Beetee asks me to marry him, it is my twenty-first birthday. He does it very well; any girl would love to have such a thoughtful proposal. He has a ring he'd procured the last time he was in the Capitol, and even though it isn't very impressive by Capitol standards—or even District One standards—it puts anything I've ever seen in District Three to shame. Sparkly and pristine in its black velvet box. Seeing the box, I'd thought it was a birthday present—a very thoughtful, probably _expensive_ birthday present from my rich victor boyfriend. However, it turns out it's the kind of present that comes with all kinds of strings attached. He gets down on one knee and professes his love with a lot of pretty words that, even after a year together, it's still hard to hear without feeling doubt or fear—fear of abandonment, fear of loss, fear in general.

But I am hesitant; every bond you forge with another person is just another weapon you hand the Capitol to use against you. I just can't bring myself to walk to the Justice Building and sign the papers, because to see it in writing, in black and white, is to acknowledge that _here_ is someone the Capital could someday use against me. To let him make me his wife would be to put Beetee in danger. It's a risk I cannot take.

I look away, closing the black velvet box he's still holding out to me with an unforgiving snap, shaking my head slowly. We don't speak of it again for over a year.

* * *

The second time Beetee asks me to marry him, I have just arrived home from the Capitol. Three days earlier, I'd been called to come in on 'urgent business.' We all know what that means. Home at last, I get off the train without a word to anyone and make my way back to my house, where I run straight to the bathroom, run the water in the bathtub as hot as it can go and climb in, still fully dressed. The hot water is painful when I first lower myself into it, but the pain is soothing in some strange, inexplicable way. It feels better to hurt on the outside than to endure the silent, creeping pain I'd been feeling inside ever since I got the call three days ago. I sit in that bathwater for maybe two hours before Beetee finally appears in the doorway.

"You left the door open," he says shortly. I shrug, not caring that I'd left the door open, not caring that he's standing in the aforementioned open doorway, not caring that I'm sitting in the bathtub with all my clothes on and must look completely unhinged.

"That water looks hot," Beetee continues, nodding at the steamed-up mirror and windows and deliberately avoiding the obvious topic of conversation. "Your skin's turning red," he adds, by way of explanation.

"It's not hot," I reply, "not…"

"Not anymore. That makes sense. You've been in here for hours."

Silence. I don't have anything to say. I feel so empty inside, so used, that I don't want to talk to anyone right now, not even Beetee.

"It's okay. You don't have to say anything. I know."

Of course he knows. He's probably the only person in the whole district who knows. Well, except maybe Gloria, his mentor, but she doesn't get called to the Capitol—at least, not anymore, and I never had the nerve to ask if she did when she was younger.

But it's _this_—his kindness, his understanding—that breaks my resolve to bear my pain in stoic silence, and I start sobbing—loudly—into my no-longer-scalding bathwater.

"I—I just—I feel so…"

"I know, Wiress, I know, but it'll get better, I promise. Like last time."

Last time…oh, how could I be so stupid as to forget last time? The fact that there _was_ a last time, and a time before that, makes me certain that there'll be a next time as well. How many 'next times' will I have to suffer through?

Beetee holds out a towel, clearly not wanting to invade my space by getting too close, and I take it, flooding the bathroom floor as I climb out of the bath, still dressed, my sodden clothes clinging to my body and making me feel about twenty pounds heavier. Or maybe that's just the weight of my despair.

I dry off, discard my soaked clothes in a heavy wet heap in the bathroom sink and get dressed in something clean and dry that hasn't already been tainted by the Capitol and the perverse demands it makes of me. Then I curl up in a ball, wedged into the very corner of my sofa, and cover myself in a quilt. I'd be quite content to stay like this forever and never emerge from this quilt to face the world that's treated me so cruelly.

Beetee takes a seat in a nearby chair, close enough to feel supportive but far enough not to feel threatening. Like Beetee would ever be a threat to me. But when I come back from the Capitol, it's like someone's kicked my senses into high gear. Everyone and everything poses a threat. It's like pouring acid on an open wound. _Everything_ hurts.

It's a long time before either of us speaks. We just sit there, in silence. Then, the words burst out of me.

"I just hate how they think they can…_buy_ me, like I'm…"

"Property. Like you belong to them," finishes Beetee in disgust. I nod, because this is _exactly_ what's been troubling me.

"How did you…?"

"Because that's how it makes me feel, and probably everyone else they call in, too. And I want to point out that I _don't_ belong to them, that I belong to _no one_, but I know I can't. Not if I want to keep my family safe. That's why _you_ do it, isn't it? And when I think about it, it makes me a little sad, because who wants to be so alone that they don't belong to anybody?"

I don't know how he does it, but he's managed to pull me right out of my despair and get me thinking about something other than my own problems. "You belong to _me_," I insist, reaching out a hand.

"Can I?" he asks me, looking slightly surprised. "Can I belong to you, really? Why don't we just make it official, Wiress, and then no matter who calls us to the Capitol, they'll know that I belong to you and you belong to me and no amount of money they pay can change that?"

I'm tempted to say yes, but the pain from the Capitol's latest assault on my life is still so raw that I'm unwilling to risk any more suffering, so I don't answer. Beetee's question, like so many of my own unfinished thoughts, remains hanging in midair, to be picked up where it was left off another day.

* * *

The third time Beetee asked me to marry him is in the wintertime. It's snowed overnight, and beautiful white snowflakes are still drifting down from the sky. They're still fairly clean as they fall; it's only when they reach the earth that all the pollutants in District Three ruin them. The snow on the ground is already sprinkled with soot. If I didn't know any better, I wouldn't care, but I've seen snow in forests during my Victory Tour, so I know what it's supposed to look like, and 'blackened' isn't it.

Still, I want to go out in it, just for a little while, so I pull on my rubber boots and my coat and scarf. I pin my hat to my hair so the winter wind won't blow it away and spend a few minutes searching for gloves that actually match. Finally, I grab the banister and climb down the icy front steps, stepping gingerly so as not to slip and fall.

The snowflakes cling to my hair, my scarf, my wool coat. White against dark, you can see the intricate patterns in the ice. It's absolutely remarkable. I stand there, completely transfixed, staring down at the snowflakes sticking to my black woolen sleeve in awe.

The crunching of snow announces the arrival of someone sneaking up behind me. Beetee walks around to face me and merely stares for a minute or two before I even look up.

"You look very deep in thought," he remarks casually. I raise my arm so he can see the snowflakes so clearly delineated against my sleeve.

"They're _perfect_," I breathe, my words coming out in a frozen breath of smoke on the cold air. "The symmetry…the complex geometric formations…just perfect."

"It's amazing," Beetee says in agreement, and I shake my head. "If only I could ever make something so perfect, so exact…"

"_Everything_ you make is perfect," replies Beetee, but he's just flattering me, because there's always a margin of error in human endeavors, though we work so tirelessly on trying to find ways to eliminate it. I point this out to him gently.

"The margin of error—"

"Oh, is it always so hard to give you a compliment? Ignore the margin of error for once. Of _course_ there's room for error; that's given, but in _my own personal opinion_, everything you make is perfect _because you made it_. Call it quality control of a sort, if you want."

"I could never…"

"Never make anything like this?" He indicates the snowflakes frozen on my coat. "Probably not. Neither could I. They're a miracle of nature. But that doesn't mean you can't make _other_ miracles."

I look at him, my eyes shining with appreciation for _this_, his confidence in my capabilities, and I immediately get the feeling that he's not just talking about my inventions. I tilt my head slightly to the side, trying to get the measure of him, trying to see where he's going with this. I have an uneasy feeling, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

"You know, Wiress, I asked you a question a while ago, and I never got an answer from you. You were really upset that day—and understandably so—but it's been a long time and I'm dying for an answer."

Oh, no. Of course I know _exactly_ what question he's referring to, even though it's been nearly a year. Maybe this is just an annual ritual of Beetee's—house cleaning in the spring, mentoring in the summer, the Harvest Festival (even though we don't harvest so much as a blade of grass here) in the fall, ask Wiress for her hand at some point during the year. But I owe it to him to give him a straight answer, since this is now the _third_ time he's brought it up and I've avoided the subject to some degree every time. I turn to face away from him, unable to say the words when we're standing face to face, because I'm a coward.

"I can't marry you," I say softly, because the snow has caused an unnatural hush to fall over the deserted streets, and I don't want to spoil it the way I'm spoiling Beetee's hopes of hearing 'yes,' rather than the 'no' he's probably grown accustomed to by now. "It's too…too dangerous."

"Dangerous? I must admit, that's not exactly the excuse I thought I'd be getting this time," Beetee replies, his voice betraying both surprise and maybe even a little amusement. As if he's thinking, _Is this the best you can do?_

"What would happen if the Capitol knew?" I ask, challenging him to come up with some amazing solution to this dilemma. "What would they make of it? What would happen the next time they wanted me or you to do…do something for them? They wouldn't have to look far to…"

I don't want him to see the tears in my eyes, which both burn and freeze at the same time as they come into contact with the frozen air. Still facing away from him, convinced that seeing his disappointment would completely undo my resolve to let him go, I blot my eyes with the tips of my gloved fingers.

"They don't have to look far as it is!" he insists, grabbing me by the shoulders and turning me to face him, so he can look upon me in all my despair and incoherence and cruelty. Because I have to be cruel to him in this one matter if I'm going to protect him. I only hope he'll forgive me later.

"Remember Haymitch Abernathy? The victor from Twelve? He won five years before you; we see him every year at the Games. Do you remember that stunt he pulled with the force field in the arena? The Capitol killed his whole family to get him back for that little bit of ingenuity. And _yes_, they killed his girlfriend, too. And _no_, they weren't married. There wasn't some piece of paperwork in a drawer somewhere in District Twelve saying '_This is Haymitch Abernathy's girlfriend._' They figured it out anyway, and if they really wanted to, they'd be able to figure us out as well, so all your precautions are kind of pointless in the end."

I shake my head, warding off his reasoning. "And now they're gone and Haymitch Abernathy…he's free, I suppose. Of the Capitol. They can't command him anymore."

Beetee's eyes widen in surprise. "And is _that_ how you want to escape them? By being so completely and utterly alone that you have no one left to comfort you but a bottle of liquor?" He sounds completely disbelieving, and even I am taken aback by the awful finality of this statement. I suddenly feel as cold inside as the falling snow around us.

"No…" I begin, wondering how I can work my way out of this. "I don't want that, I just don't want to make it easier for…"

"You can't cast off everything you care about in life and everyone you love just because you're afraid of losing them," Beetee says firmly. "Otherwise, the Capitol wins. If you're broken and alone, you've got nothing left to fight for."

I think about this for a moment, because he's right, as usual. I'm still not ready to take this huge step, though, because even if we're discreet, news like this gets out. When you're a public figure, your life is fodder for gossip in the Capitol and everywhere else.

"I can't say 'yes'," I tell him, trying my hardest to look purposeful and serious.

"But you don't say 'no,' either," he rejoins, barely hiding a grin. "So at least I have something to hope for."

I never really appreciated how beautiful the snow is, until that day.

* * *

Last time Beetee asked me to marry him, we had an appointment at the Justice Building with an official from the Patents Office, who'd traveled in from the Capitol to see us. We spend what must be at least an hour sitting on hard wooden chairs outside an office that's been appropriated for the patent official's use. Beetee's got a whole file of sketches and I'm holding a really cumbersome box containing my latest creation. I'd set it on my lap when I first sat down, but now that I've been sitting here for a while, its weight is getting to me and my legs are falling asleep. Finally—probably because he's eager to get out of District 3 and back to the Capitol as soon as possible—the official calls us in, one by one, and we present our work to him.

"What a waste," I mutter as we head back down the tiled corridor. I'm struggling with the box under my arm, balancing it against my hip as I walk, but my arm's barely long enough to go all the way around it.

"A waste?" asks Beetee, and I raise my eyebrows. "That took ten minutes. They kept us waiting all day, when we could've been…"

"In and out. I know, but since when is the Capitol a model of efficiency and good judgment?"

This makes me laugh, and we stand there, sharing a smile at the Capitol's expense, before I shift the heavy box yet _again_ and announce, "Let's go home, before they find a way to waste even more of our time."

Beetee pushes open the front door and holds it for me, but he jumps back inside, stepping on my foot, before I can follow him out.

"Ouch! What was—?"

"Sorry, Wiress—they're taking a picture, I'm sure they'll only be a minute…"

Curious, because why would someone be photographing the Justice Building?, I unceremoniously shove my heavy box into Beetee's arms and open the door a crack so I can peek out.

Standing on the front steps of the Justice Building are a young couple, probably around my age. The girl has on a white dress—well, I imagine it must've once been white, perhaps when it was made back in District 8, but everything white generally darkens to the same shade of grayish off-white after exposure to the air here in District 3—and the young man beside her is dressed in what must be the finest clothes he could lay his hands on. He's wearing a somewhat worn-looking suit, which must've been black when it was new. It doesn't fit entirely right, but it looks okay, really. It's clear they've just been married; their families are gathered around them, chattering excitedly. An older woman—probably the bride's mother—holds an official-looking paper in her hand, and someone with a camera is positioning the happy couple for what may be the only photograph they ever take, depending on their circumstances.

Their excitement is contagious. I watch them through the crack between the door and the doorframe for several long minutes, and when I turn to take back my parcel, I'm still smiling. Beetee takes note of my smile and moves closer so that he can take a good look at the happy couple, too.

"They look so happy," he says, correctly interpreting the source of my contentment.

"They do," I concur. "She looks beautiful, in her wedding dress…"

"You would look beautiful in one, too," Beetee teases, and I nearly drop the box as I swat at him in retribution.

"You, know, we're already here," he continues, and his voice takes on a more serious, thoughtful tone. "It would be easy. We'd just have to run right into that office over there, fill out some papers…we could run and get your sister, to act as witness…we could even stop and get you something pretty to wear, if you want…"

"Convenient, yes, but _easy_? Never easy!" I retort, because he's seriously thinking about it.

"Well, nothing in life is easy," he concedes. "Loving you included. It's a very complicated business, Wiress; you certainly don't like to make it easy for me. But what do you say?"

"_Now_?" My voice comes out in a squeak, like a young girl's. "Not today, not now!"

"Why not today, why not now?"

"I'm just…I'm not…not today."

"Another day, maybe?"

"Maybe."

It's the closest he's gotten to an outright acceptance from me, and I can tell it raises his spirits. What's surprising is that it raises mine, too, and the world looks so much sunnier and more beautiful as we step outside. I'd thought that even seriously _considering_ marrying him would fill me with anxiety, but I'm rewarded with a profound sense of calm.

* * *

Which brings us to today. We're sitting at my kitchen table, drinking tea—he has a taste for coffee, but I never really liked it much, and he didn't think to buy more—as I look over the sketches for the latest project I'm working on. I don't know what moves Beetee to bring up the topic of marriage again, out of nowhere, unless I was right and it really is an annual thing with him, marked down on a calendar somehwere.

"_Wiress_," he begins, and already I know where this is going.

"Not again." He sighs in frustration and flips the cover on my sketchbook, so I have no choice but to give him my undivided attention.

"Wiress, this is ridiculous, are you going to keep me asking forever? I promised you six years ago that I would always protect you and make you happy. I'd do anything for you. Why can't you just trust me to take care of you? I've taken away every excuse you've offered me over the past five years. Do you have anything new to add, or are you finally out of excuses?"

I'm out of excuses. I'm 26 years old. Beetee's been a constant in my life for the past eight years. Six years ago, I'd taken the huge step of letting myself fall in love with him, despite my fears, and it was the best decision I'd ever made, because I don't know how I would've lived all this time without him. I marshal my thoughts, searching frantically for a single good reason why I shouldn't marry him that he hasn't already disproved, and I come up completely empty.

* * *

Today, Beetee asks me to marry him for the fifth time and as usual, I refuse. I refuse to go down to the Justice Building and fill out the papers. I refuse to let our personal lives be the subject of gossip for all of Panem. Most of all, I refuse to hand the Capitol the one weapon it could use to utterly destroy me. But after I give all my refusals, I reach out and take the ring from the velvet box at last—it's still sparkly after all this time—and allow him to put it on my finger. Then, I stick my head out the front door and call Gloria over for a quick minute. We rummage through the kitchen drawers to get the wire we'll need for the old District Three marriage ritual, where a couple joins their right hands to be wrapped in copper wire by their witness, 'sealing the deal,' as some would say. We repeat the words our parents said before us, and their parents before them. And after this, we're as married as any two people can be. Gloria writes out an official notation—that on this day, she witnessed our marriage, according to the customs of District Three, and in doing so made it legally binding. We hide this notation at the bottom of our silverware drawer, where no one would ever think to look.

In the end, I got my way. No Capitol papers were signed. No forms filled out. We took not even a step in the direction of the Justice Building. As far as the Capitol is concerned, there is absolutely nothing between us worthy of note. Just the way I wanted it.

But we also have a secret, Beetee and I. No matter what the official records in the Justice Building's files might say, I am his and he is mine and what has been joined together no one can separate.

And that's _also_ just the way I wanted it.

* * *

_And the moral of the story? Not sure, but I bet t would be something along the lines of the rewards of perseverance..._

_I just love happy endings! And so, as a wedding present to the newlyweds, please review and let me know what you're thinking!_

_I hope to return soon with our next update, which fast-forwards by a considerable number of years. Until then, remember to review and all the best!_

_Delilah_


	15. 4:15

_Hi, everyone! Hope all my readers are well and have been enjoying the story thus far._

_Thanks a million times over to **vapiddreamscape** and **KTstoriesandstuff** for their kind reviews of chapter 14 and to **Crazy Female LEPrecon**, who reviewed chapter 2! It was nice getting to write a chapter that was all light and hope and happiness in the end...even though (while I can't say from my own personal experience) I'm sure asking someone to marry you (not to mention five times!) has to merit a bravery of its own, even if we didn't visit the arena this time around. As my mother said, it's the most important conversation you'll ever have and the scariest question he'll ever ask. _

_And so, on to today's update, approximately twelve years after the action of chapter 14. The male Peacekeeper we meet later in the chapter is not quite accurate in his math, for any of you who are trying to calculate a timeline. He assumes that it's been twenty years since Wiress has won her Games; it won't officially be that long until the Seventy-Fifth Games roll around in a few months' time. Therefore, she's approaching her __thirty-eighth birthday. I decided to give her a spring birthday (this chapter takes place in the winter) because I liked its connotations of rebirth and renewal and fresh starts. Enjoy!_

* * *

Four-Fifteen

Four-fifteen is the time the revolts begin.

Well, technically, the rebellion began long before. It started before my time, before my _parents'_ time, even. Perhaps since the defeat of the districts at the close of the Dark Days, there's been resentment and rebellion simmering right below the surface.

It wouldn't be surprising. Looking around, the vision that is 'home' which greets my eyes is so thoroughly uninspiring that I can readily understand why some would risk everything to change it. Everything here seems to look washed-out, like we've given up entirely: from the dull, square buildings, to the ashen complexions and dark hair of most of the residents, to the drab clothes they send us specially from District 8. The very air you breathe is harsh and full of ash and pollutants. It's a place full of cement and bricks and smog that never seems to wash out of your clothes or hair or skin completely. Men, women and children work in the factories that produce all of Panem's technology, which we ironically can't afford to buy. The work doesn't pay particularly well, so we crowd into poorly-maintained tenements and try to make ends meet to keep from starving. I think back to growing up in that familiar four-room, third floor apartment in one such building, with my brother and sister, about four blocks from the factory where I'd had my first job. Beetee and his brothers grew up in an almost identical building several blocks away. Who knows; if we'd never been chosen for the Games, we might be raising a family of our own in yet another identical building. That's the most you can aspire to here. It's no wonder we're living in a breeding ground for discontent.

It's ironic that the people of District 3 are known for their intelligence. I've learned, over the years, that 'District Three intelligence' is a sort of catchphrase, something taken for granted by those outside the district—as in, 'it doesn't take District 3 intelligence to see…'. And, like most stereotypes I suppose, there's a bit of truth in it. We _are_ smart. We _have_ to be smart, to create all the technology that we produce. But despite all this, it still took seventy-five years for us, _supposedly_ smart people, to question why we let the Capitol treat us like slaves, work us to death, starve us in the brick prisons of factory and tenement and year after year send our children off to die in the arena...and what's more, to decide that there is no sufficiently satisfactory explanation behind all the ill-treatment. And that is what starts the fire. After a point, enough is enough, and late is still better than never. And so it begins.

* * *

As anyone from a manufacturing district will tell you, factories are very loud places to work. The noise generated by the machinery provides the perfect cover for forming secret plans of rebellion. I don't know where it starts in the very beginning, but I know how talk spreads. And, with few better ways to occupy my time, I know almost immediately that I want to be in on these blossoming plans of rebellion. Victors have a special status, exempt from working in their district's industry, so Beetee and I commit ourselves fully to the task of building support. We talk to people whenever and wherever we can deflect suspicion—at the market, in the streets. We're very well-known amongst the people, so I suppose it doesn't look too suspicious that all of a sudden we've got such active social lives. But still, we know we have to be cautious. You never know who's watching or listening, and where their true allegiance lies. We can't take the risk of being found out. Once we are able to disable some of the Capitol's surveillance equipment, we start to set up more secure meeting places. We establish contacts in other districts whenever we meet up with like-minded victors in the Capitol and use what technology we have to set up communications with them. It's rudimentary at best, a far cry from what I'd really like to be able to set up for the rebels, but it's something, and we feel like we've made a valuable contribution, small as it may be. The tension in the district grows, because now everyone senses that something's coming, only they don't know exactly when. People all over District 3 are advised (in an undertone, out of sight and hearing) to start stockpiling food and improvising weapons. Even kitchen knives and frying pans are kept on the ready to be employed for other, less domestic purposes. Supplies are smuggled off factory workbenches. Wires, circuits, mines, explosives…whatever can be used against the Capitol could work.

It's hard, to get enough people together in one place at the same time to set concrete plans. So plans are formed whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. Whispers between co-workers through the din of machinery. Targets are agreed upon.

It starts with low-level insurrections. Discontent spills over into work slowdowns and stoppages. Skirmishes with Peacekeepers. But the spark that lights the fuse of our rebellion is a video clip the Capitol never meant for us to see. Whoever suspected that a mandatory, Capitol-approved broadcast could push our district over the edge?

* * *

Every TV in Panem is broadcasting the District 12 victors' visit to District 11, the first stop on their Victory Tour. I seriously doubt that anyone particularly enjoys watching the Victory Tour, either on television or in person, but-like the Hunger Games themselves-we don't have a choice about whether or not we'll tune in. What surprises me this time is that the broadcast actually turns into something _worth_ watching. The Capitol cuts off the coverage of Katniss Everdeen's speech before she can say anything damaging, but it's crudely done. Beetee and I exchange wordless glances. There is more to the story and we know it. We'd helped _create_ the latest version of the Capitol's broadcasting system, so it isn't too hard for us to tap into it and see the full clip. We set about the task like we'd set about starting a new hobby, with snacks on hand, good-naturedly. It seems like an intriguing puzzle that we're mildly curious about-what had the Capitol wanted to hide? It's not long before we've extracted the original footage and we have our answer. Once we've seen it, we know we can't keep this information to ourselves. Word spreads fast—in the apartment blocks, the schools, the factories. Workers lean in close to share the news, their voices obscured by industrial noise. Kids pass notes between the rows of desks in their classrooms and when their teachers catch them, they return the notes silently, silently condoning the flow of forbidden knowledge with secret smiles. Within two days, practically everyone in District 3 knows _exactly_ what the Capitol has tried to hide from us. The planning continues with a sense of urgency that it was lacking before. Before, there was discontent; there was whining and muttering that _someone should do something_, but there was also an unspoken addendum: _as long as it's not me_. Now, it's different. It _has_ to be me, and you, and all of us, because it's clear that all of us are in this together, and unless we do something, the status quo can go on like this forever, long after our dust is mingling beneath the frozen ground.

* * *

The day the revolts begin is a Wednesday. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark and the rest of their entourage are long gone and their arrival on their Victory Tour is nothing but a colorful memory, rendered even more colorful by our secret knowledge of their disobedience in Eleven. After the festivities, it's back to business as usual—the business of starving and freezing and working one's fingers to the bone, that is. It's winter; the ground is icy and the sky is a uniform, steely gray. I look briefly at the clock in my kitchen; already a quarter after four. It'll be dark soon. I content myself with making tea. From my kitchen, I can hear the first sound of an explosion and wonder if there's been an accident. I stick my head out the door to see my nearest neighbors running through the streets to the district center.

"What's happened? What was—?" I begin.

"It's started!" replied Geiger Evans, my neighbor's teenage son, who is sprinting towards the source of the commotion. Without thinking about it, I pull on my coat and follow. I'm joined by more and more people, a veritable tide of people, as I get closer to the heart of the district. What I find there is absolute pandemonium.

The district center, the home of the Capitol's presence in Three, is packed with rebels. Some are attacking the Peacekeepers with weapons they'd taken from the factories or improvised at home. A group is forcing their way into the Justice Building. The Communications Center is being barricaded, rather unsuccessfully, by Peacekeepers. Little kids from the school are running home, fleeing the chaos, while older ones are picking up bricks from destroyed buildings to throw at the Peacekeepers. Every so often, an explosion rocks the very ground we stand on.

The Peacekeepers look bemused at first. Who'd expect a district full of scrawny, malnourished factory workers to stage a violent revolt? We're technicians, not warriors! They brandish their guns and sneer at us from the steps of the Justice Building in contempt and I'm instantly reminded of something I saw on the Hunger Games, long ago: the Peacekeepers look just like the Career tributes who'd sneered down at Beetee, right before he'd electrocuted them all those years ago. They think we're easy prey. And for a moment, I can maybe see their point, because while they have guns and protective body armor, all we have is improvised weapons and a good deal of pent-up resentment. That is, until a team of rebels manages to blow up the very steps they stand on. The sky rains down chunks of masonry, bloodstained scraps of Peacekeeper uniforms and a lot of stuff I really don't want to identify. One of the guns—the only one that somehow survived the blast—is pried from the hand of a dead Peacekeeper and handed off to one of the rebels, a middle-aged woman who looks to be maybe ten years older than me. She's a teacher from Electra's kids' school; I think my niece was in her class last year. Ordinarily, she wouldn't hurt a fly; today, she runs off with her appropriated gun and starts shooting down Peacekeepers like a hired assassin.

* * *

The revolt doesn't even last three full days. The Capitol sends in more Peacekeepers, and we fight back. Finally, late on Friday afternoon, a massive dark shadow fills the skies. A hovercraft, gliding ominously overhead, stops suddenly over a crowded residential area. For a split second, I wonder why the Capitol's only just thought of sending in hovercrafts _now_; wouldn't that be one of the first things they'd do to overpower us? I guess they simply thought that they'd be able to squash the rebellion in a couple of hours, that we were weak and not worth the heavy artillery they'd only just resorted to now. Their arrogance, rather than our skill, is what has prolonged our assault. The hovercraft lingers in midair for a moment over the buildings, as though daring us to fight back, and then it drops the explosives, destroying tenements and killing countless people. Immediately, a huge tide of people starts running flat-out for the bombing site. My legs carry me closer even as my mind screams out that I won't want to see what awaits me there.

We dig through the debris barehanded, desperately searching for survivors, who are few and far between. I hear a woman wailing as she cradles the motionless body of her child, while nearby one of Beetee's brothers searches desperately for his wife, screaming her name into the frozen air and digging through the wreckage for any sign of her. "Wiress!" he shouts upon seeing me, "Wiress, have you seen Sarah? Have you seen her? She—she wasn't home, was she? Tell me she wasn't home!" His voice is ragged with grief, pleading not just with me, but with a power greater than the two of us that somehow, miraculously, his wife was spared where so many others were not. I can't think of what to say to him, but kneel down beside him and start sifting through the wreckage, unsure whether I really want to know what lies beneath. The Peacekeepers don't help. Instead, they bring in a loudspeaker.

"People of District 3," announces one of the Peacekeepers—a woman with a cold, detached voice—"In response to your recent acts of violence, the Capitol has authorized us to impose an immediate district-wide house arrest. You are to return to your residences without delay. No one is to leave their assigned residence for any reason until further notice. Anyone caught on the streets will be shot on sight. If you resist, another hovercraft will be brought in and the bombings will resume without interruption. That is all." As if to emphasize the seriousness of their threats, they immediately start to open fire on the crowd. No warning. No five minutes' grace period. Just carnage.

I run for cover as the Peacekeepers spray us with bullets. I scurry past burning buildings and leap over bodies without checking to see if they are dead or alive, telling myself that I can't stop until I reach the safety of my house in the Victor's Village. Someone bigger than me shoves me roughly to the ground, scraping up my hands and knees and bruising my face, but I jump back to my feet and keep running as fast as my legs will carry me, one hand absurdly holding my hat on my head. I can hear screams and crashes and gunfire following me all the way, but I don't dare myself to look back, not even to see if Beetee's brother had got away. Just like in the arena, my survival instincts take over. Finally reaching my house, I wrench open the door, slam it shut behind me and take cover, trembling, under the kitchen table, without even taking off my hat or scarf. I start wheezing from the exertion but I'm too scared to come out and look for the inhaler I've only been able to afford since winning the Games. I'd stay under here forever, if I could.

* * *

Citizens are kept under house arrest for the next two weeks. The factories are closed and production grinds to a complete halt. I think of the winter my mother died, how even a day's missed wages left us hungry; two weeks would have a family like ours fighting off starvation. Periodically, the Peacekeepers cut off the electricity, as though to keep us from improvising more weapons, or maybe just to show us who's _really_ in charge here. I imagine this would probably be a mild to moderate source of annoyance in most districts; for us, it is crippling. It feels scary, to realize how much we rely on it. Imagine, no _electricity_, in _District 3_, of all places! Since the factories are always open and their machinery requires a constant flow of power, most people can't say they've ever gone without it before. Only District 5, where they have the power plants, might be able to relate.

The Peacekeepers start carrying out interrogations one building at a time, trying to find the instigators of the revolt. The ones they find are publicly executed in the district center. We are all forced to watch. It's the only time they allow us to leave our homes. I stand in the crowd, watching the Peacekeepers drag my neighbors up the steps to the gallows: some fighting, others resigned to die with some degree of dignity. Some of them are elderly. Some are children. To look sorry for the condemned is to invite suspicion, but no one really cares anymore. The faces in the crowd are stony with disapproval, because _this is wrong_ and we're no longer afraid to say it.

They come to question me while the electricity is still cut off, only to find me cowering in a corner. I don't do well in the dark anymore, not since my Games, and Beetee is confined to his house next door (the one he hasn't actually _lived_ in in years, but which is still listed as his official residence), so I am all alone.

There are two of them. Two Peacekeepers. I can hear the sound of their boots as they stomp in, pushing in the door like my home's public property.

"Where is she?" barks the first. He has a gruff voice, marked by an unfamiliar accent.

"She's here," replies the other—a woman. I recognize her voice as the one I'd heard over the loudspeaker that day they bombed the apartment block. It's just as I remember it—cold, precise. "She can't go anywhere. Come to think of it, they might _both_ be here."

I huddle in the corner of my living room, behind the sofa, fiddling absentmindedly with my wedding ring to give my hands something to do, wishing with every fiber of my being that they'll just go away, profoundly grateful that they won't find Beetee here, disobeying the direct order to go to his 'home.' That's one thing they won't be able to punish him for.

The footsteps draw nearer and I look up to see them, standing shoulder to shoulder right in front of me. I'd known this was coming, but it didn't prepare me for the shock of actually seeing them _here_, in my house, under my roof.

The male Peacekeeper grabs me roughly above the elbow. "Get up," he growls, and with that he pulls me forcibly to my kitchen table and deposits me in a hard, wooden chair, directly across from the seat the female Peacekeeper's settled into without even being invited to sit down. He, however, prefers to stand, towering over me. I guess it's an intimidation tactic they learn at the Peacekeeper Academy or something.

"Are you—" Here, the woman glances down at a list, "—Wiress Purcelle?" She pronounces it wrong, but I don't bother to correct her. I nod mutely, unable to find my voice. It's madness, anyway, to think that she doesn't know _exactly_ who I am.

"We're here, Miss Purcelle, to discover the identities of those responsible for the recent—_unpleasantness_—here in District 3." They share a meaningful look, probably noting my reaction to the fact that a violent insurrection that claimed hundreds of lives has just been downgraded to 'unpleasantness'.

The man leans over me menacingly. His eyes are cold and so dark, you can't tell where the iris ends and the pupil begins. It's a chilling effect, really. "And what can you tell us about it…Wiress, is it?"

"N—nothing," I stammer, determined not to give in to their intimidation tactics. He slams a fist down angrily on the table. "I don't know any—"

"You liar!" he shouts, inches away from my ear. "You think you're so much smarter than us, don't you? District 3. We've got lists of known instigators and you victors, you're right at the top. Look at you—no job, nothing to do all day but cause trouble, right?" As he says all this, he leans in closer. I'm gripping the sides of the chair until my knuckles turn white, leaning as far back as I can to get away from him, from this invasion of my space and from the accusations, only some of which are true.

"No," I say in little more than a whisper, "no, I don't want to cause any—any—I just want to…"

The woman is eyeing me shrewdly, perhaps wondering if my incoherence is genuine or just a very good act. For a moment, I wonder if they'll go easy on me if I play up the 'shattered victor' angle. I think of that District 7 girl, Johanna Mason, who won her Games by tricking everyone into thinking she was a harmless weakling. Maybe I can use the same tactics to escape interrogation and punishment. Weighing my options, I suppose it's worth a try and, after all, I'd only have to embroider issues that already exist to some degree. In my head, I start piecing together a plan. It's a long shot, but it's all I've got at the moment.

"What do you know about the uprisings in the district? Who else was involved?" the female Peacekeeper asks briskly, her eyes trained on my face as if trying to root out any deception I may have planned.

I fix my eyes on a point on the wall, slightly above her head, and do something I never, _ever_ do intentionally: I think of the arena. I can almost smell its musty air; the male Peacekeeper merges in my mind's eye with District Two, my would-be killer. I can feel my panic rising and know that it must show on my face. It's up to the Peacekeepers to decide whether the panic comes from guilt or mental instability.

"Are you listening? How were you involved with the uprisings?" The male Peacekeeper has a vein throbbing in his forehead. His last comment sprays me with spit.

"So—so dark," I stammer, determined not to look at either of them. "The trees…and the—the water…running through the dark…oh, why can't I just go home?"

The Peacekeepers share a bemused look. "What's her problem?" scoffs the woman.

"Please…please don't…don't kill me, I'm only eighteen!" I whimper. The madness may be feigned, but the terror is very real. Yesterday, I watched them execute a twelve-year-old kid.

"_Eighteen_? Yeah, maybe twenty years ago," snorts the male Peacekeeper, and I think to myself, _Yeah, I'm unbalanced. Look at the crazy Hunger Games victor. It's not for nothing that they call me 'Nuts.' You're not going to get anything of value from me. Might as well leave. _To drive the point home, I cover my ears and start humming to myself in agitation. I've seen Annie Cresta do it on occasion, and here it produces beautiful results.

"It's no use," the female Peacekeeper says, "she's completely unhinged. We'll have better luck next door, anyway." She stands to go, and he follows, but not without smashing a mug against the wall, right next to my head. I shudder visibly as bits of ceramic bounce off my shoulder and litter the floor.

* * *

I think my trembling and stammering and my inability to communicate, not to mention my feigned insanity, very clearly lead the Peacekeepers to believe that I'm not in a position to pose much of a threat or to provide valuable information, at least not at the present moment. So they leave me alone, without a return visit, though I think they make a point of keeping my power off after everyone else gets theirs back, just to torment me. Beetee is less lucky—I think they must have been convinced of his guilt and tried to beat the information out of him, because when he is finally able to make his way home, I have to tend to his injuries. They don't dare kill him, though, at least not now, because whether they like it or not, he is famous throughout Panem and his absence at the next Hunger Games wouldn't go unnoticed.

"Do you think it was worth it?" he asks me, wincing slightly as I soak a gauze pad in antiseptic and press it to the gash in his forehead.

"I—I don't—" I begin, not even sure how I intend to respond, even if I could. Was it worth it? The streets are full of Peacekeepers, far more than usual. They must have been sent in from all over Panem to deal with our little insurrection. They point their guns at me as I do my shopping and I have to remind myself to mutter nonsense under my breath or look unbalanced every time I pass them, keeping my cover. I watched one of my father's old work buddies-a younger man who my father himself trained when he first came to work at the automotive factory, who used to play cards with Dad and the others on Friday nights-be hanged in the district center for setting off the explosives at the Justice Building. His twelve-year-old son was hanged beside him as he died, sharing his punishment for the crime of merely handing his father his tools as he worked. We never found Beetee's sister-in-law; his little niece had stayed home sick from school that day and died in the explosion. She was buried in pieces, in a mass grave along with hundreds of others who'd lived in that apartment block—buried without ceremony, before disease could set in. A Peacekeeper scowled at us as we stood, hand-in-hand, where they'd buried Beetee's brother's family. "Move along, you two," he snarled, raising his weapon threateningly.

"What did we even achieve, really?" Beetee continues, and I can't tell anymore if he's talking to me or simply giving voice to his thoughts. I busy myself with bandaging his right arm, thinking over what I want to say.

"That remains…" I begin, and I see, for the first time in weeks, the hint of a smile on his tired face.

"…Remains to be seen. It certainly does."

And it is then that I know that what has been unleashed here cannot be settled in one fell strike by the Capitol. What has happened here is far from over.

* * *

_Well, here we go-the first of a series of chapters that will take us up through the Third Quarter Quell. Hope everyone's well and you're still with me here. Please review and I'll be back soon with our next update._

_Delilah_


	16. Thirty Eight

_**Oops! I'm sure you're all wondering why my last chapter title didn't match the title at the top of the story. It's because I got my files mixed up and uploaded chapter 16 instead. So please, feel free to go back and read and review chapter 15 (the_ real_ chapter 15) and see where it fits in before this one. What follows is the original AN that preceded chapter 16, the one I uploaded by mistake:**_

_Now loading version 2.0..._

_Hello, everyone!_

_As usual, let me begin with some thank-yous. My thanks go out to **KTstoriesandstuff** for reviewing chapter 15. I also thank any and all of you out there who are following this story, even if I don't know who you are._

_Next, allow me to offer a new disclaimer. We're moving into canon territory here. Before you read another word, I must warn you that anything you recognize does not belong to me. These are Suzanne Collins' creations; I just borrow them. Speaking of borrowing, I directly borrowed that bit about "It's no wonder I won my Games. No decent person ever does." I must've reworded it a thousand ways, but there was just no topping that little bit of candor, so just remember that that's not mine._

* * *

Thirty-Eight

_Thirty-eight_ is how old I am when I'm chosen for the third Quarter Quell. The first time I was a tribute in the Hunger Games, I never imagined living to 38. I never even imagined living another _week_. But now that I'm faced with an unprecedented second trip into the arena, it strikes me just how old I am. Thirty-eight. That's twenty years older than the oldest tribute I've ever mentored, when I'm called to follow in their footsteps, in clear violation of both the law and common decency.

* * *

It's cold the night it all begins. We're sitting in our living room, watching Caesar Flickerman broadcast Katniss Everdeen's bridal gowns on TV. I remember Katniss and her now-fiancé Peeta from their Victory Tour, though they wouldn't remember me. I'd first seen them in person as they stood on the stage erected in front of our Justice Building, from my inconspicuous spot standing in the crowd like a total nonentity. It was cold and the wind whipped my hair from under my hat and stung my cheeks, almost to the point of getting me to forsake the packed square for the comfort of my home in the Victor's Village. But I wasn't about to let a little discomfort force me to surrender my first real glimpse at the newest victors. This was the only way I could even attend their appearance at all; the last thing the Capitol wants is scenes of Hunger Games victors from different, potentially rebellious districts bonding on TV. Nonetheless, we'd cheered them heartily here in District 3, even though they'd survived where our tributes had died. The tributes Beetee and I had mentored, as a matter of fact. It doesn't matter, though, because it was clear from the moment they'd threatened a double suicide rather than have one kill the other that the time had come for action. These two were part of the rebellion, even if they didn't know it yet. No one could possibly make the Capitol look that stupid unintentionally.

So as we sit here, watching Katniss pose in sumptuous wedding gowns for the Capitol viewers to vote on, I'm feeling pretty good about the newest recruits to the rebellion and the spread of our cause. Then comes the announcement of the Quarter Quell. I was eligible for the last one, that horrible year with twice the normal number of tributes, when everything in the arena had been poisonous and Haymitch Abernathy had won. I was thirteen, and luckily I was spared that year, though I wouldn't be quite as lucky in later years. Still, I can't fully suppress the feeling of unease as I watch President Snow slit open that yellowed envelope and try to envision the sick twist featured in this year's Games. A sick twist, moreover, that I'll somehow have to mentor frightened children through.

The President's face is as emotionless as a mask as he reads the special instructions for the 75th anniversary of the Games. It's impossible for me to see what he's thinking for certain, but part of me swears I can detect the faintest trace of a sneer as he gives the news that will change my life.

"On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."

_Reaped from their existing pool of victors_…the words make sense, but the message doesn't. I glance at Beetee, wondering if he's experiencing the same sensation as I am: disbelief, rounded out by an unspecified feeling of cold, creeping dread. For the moment, he looks simply stunned. Then, the message hits home with the force of a speeding train.

_Back into the arena_. That's what all this nonsense means. I may be going back into the arena. I had counted myself so lucky to have escaped it with my life the first time, only to quickly realize that you _never_ escape the arena, not fully. You carry it with you, inside you, every single day for the rest of your life. I still dream about it. I'd accepted that fact, years ago; that I'd never be fully free. And now they want to send me back.

The next thought that registers in my numb brain is that _something is seriously wrong here_. Victors are out of the reaping for life; that's how it works. This much is clear to Beetee at least, because he's sitting beside me muttering incredulously, "But…that's _illegal…'_reaped from the existing pool of victors'…they _can't_…" The extent of his disbelief is tangible.

He's right. No one can possibly be expected to endure that torture a second time. It strikes me that the odds of this particular Quarter Quell, this timely purge of the living Hunger Games victors, being devised seventy-five years ago only to resurface _at the exact moment_ when it would be most convenient to President Snow are infinitesimal. I won't even begin to calculate the probability, because there are simply too many variables at play here to factor in. No; far too convenient in its timing, this Quell has to be a fake. But what would prompt the President to try and fix the Hunger Games?

Well, that's simple, really. Vengeance.

What was it that President Snow had said? That this was to prove that 'not even the strongest amongst us can overcome the power of the Capitol,' or something like that? What had I said while watching the finale to last year's Games in the control room? _No one could make the Capitol look that stupid unintentionally_. Katniss and Peeta, last year's victors, and their bold stance against the Capitol in the Games' shocking finale. That, plus the uprisings occurring here in District 3 and the ones rumored to be happening in other districts…I guess President Snow figures he can get rid of us survivors and crush the rebels' spirit, all in one neat package.

Well, that's just wonderful for Coriolanus Snow, but what about poor, broken Wiress? The truth is, I'm not sure I can face the arena again.

* * *

Once I'm able to process the full meaning of this Quarter Quell—that in all likelihood _this_ is my death sentence—I collapse on my living room floor in an incoherent, sobbing heap, because there's no point in being strong when the odds are never, _ever_ in my favor. Beetee leaps from his chair and is instantly at my side, wrapping me in his arms and stroking my hair, but it's no use. I'm crying as much for him as I am for myself, because he's as doomed as I am. This is beyond anything I've feared for us over the years; it surpasses even the worst tragedies I've imagined lay in our futures on my very darkest days. We sit there, on the floor: him soothing, me sobbing, for hours.

I find out later that my cries of despair could be heard throughout the neighborhood. At first, people thought there'd been an accident; that someone was horribly wounded, dying even. However, once they were able to track the source of the noise to my house, they were able to put two and two together. After all, everyone had seen the President's broadcast; everyone knew what this Quell meant for us inhabitants of the Victors' Village. The noise lasted well into the night, but no one had the heart to tell us to shut up so they could get some sleep.

* * *

Reaping Day is, if possible, worse than any I've ever seen. Maybe this is because District 3 has been in various stages of rebellion for the past few months, and the Peacekeepers have come down hard on all of us. Maybe the people of our district just hate the idea of saying goodbye to those of us who've somehow survived, who've given them all the hope that they too could survive. Either way, there's an uncomfortable silence as our district escort reaches into the nearly empty glass balls.

Contrary to the Capitol's insistent catchphrase, the odds are most definitely _not_ in my favor. District 3 has had few victors over the years. Only five of us are alive today. We're viewed as one of the weaker districts every year when the Hunger Games roll around. Cannon fodder for the Bloodbath. We're not a Career district, so our tributes lack the helpful, illegal training that tributes from One, Two and Four always have. Believe it or not, districts like Seven, Ten and Eleven also have a distinct advantage over us, even if they aren't aware of it. Just think about their industries: Lumber. Livestock. Agriculture. Good, honest physical labor that produces tributes who are strong and tough and knowledgeable about the wilderness. Even underfed, they tower over the typical District 3 tribute.

Here in District 3-as everyone knows-our specialty is factories. Electronics. Technology. What survival skills can be learned wiring TVs in a factory? Exactly. Give me a plant from the arena and I wouldn't know whether to eat it, use it for medicine, throw it away, weave it into a protective sunhat…because where would I learn to work with plants back home? Where would I even _find_ plants to begin with?

We—that is, District 3's selection of living victors, which I can count on the fingers of one hand—stand in the fenced-off area usually occupied by teenagers, our friends and neighbors standing behind the partition, waiting to find out who's going to be sacrificed this year. A row of stern-faced Peacekeepers separates us from the rest of the crowd. I glance back at them, thinking the sight of some friendly faces might calm my nerves. The sheer size of the Peacekeepers blocks my view of my neighbors and friends, though. They scowl at me as if to imply that even if I slipped through the Capitol's fingers last time, this time I wouldn't be so lucky. I clench my hands into fists to keep them from trembling and force my mind away from memories of the last time I stood down here. I'd been trembling _that day_, too.

Lucretia seems to have skipped her usual pandering to the crowd, her cries of "Who first—boys or girls?" because she's already standing at the glass balls, reaching down to grab one of the three slips of paper and name the female tribute. It strikes me that she hasn't seemed to age a day in the past twenty-one years. She clears her throat theatrically and when I hear "Wi—" I know it's me and don't bother listening for the rest of my name, because the other female victors are both staring at me ruefully. Gloria is an elderly lady with a bunch of little grandchildren; she mentored Beetee in his Games many years ago. At her age, she won't have lasted five minutes into the Games. Then there's Cyan, a tribute of mine who'd won her Games twelve years ago at sixteen. Glancing back through the wall of Peacekeepers, I see Gloria's grandchildren letting out the collective breath they'd been holding and I'm relieved they won't have to watch their grandmother die. Then it sinks in. Gloria and Cyan may have won their lives back, but at the price of mine. And what have I won? The opportunity for _my_ loved ones to watch _me_ die instead. Another trip into the arena, when anyone would've thought I'd be safe.

I walk up the stairs of the Justice Building and onto the platform, beside our escort. I sincerely hope the crowd can't see my knees knocking beneath my dress. As a Hunger Games victor, I feel I should show slightly more grit.

Now it's time to choose the male victor, and Beetee's odds are worse than mine had been, because there's only two slips of paper in that big, glass bowl and his name's on one of them. Fifty-fifty. The boy standing beside him, in his early twenties, looks terrified. We _all_ are, of course, but he hasn't been out of the Games for as long as the rest of us have, so perhaps the danger seems all the more tangible to him. I briefly scold myself for wondering whether, in the event he's called, this poor boy will be one of those tributes who freeze up and are immediately dispatched at the bloodbath. I'm a terrible person. It's no wonder I won my Games. No decent person ever does.

But no, it's Beetee's name that's called, and I feel the earth shift violently beneath me. Someone out there truly hates me. My money's on President Snow.

Somehow, despite all Beetee's assurances to the contrary, Snow must have figured out the truth. That Beetee is the one person I'd do anything to protect, before anyone else. He helped me survive my Games. We've helped each other survive ever since, through the Victory Tour and the mentoring, through everything the Capitol put us through since then and the overall aftermath of our Games. We know that neither of us can ever be completely whole again, and we've accepted that. But we have done a pretty decent job of putting each other back together.

And now we have to kill each other.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Is it paranoid to realize that the world really _is_ out to get you?

We look out at the assembled crowd from our places on the stage. Not one of the faces looks happy; some of them—our neighbors—are probably still hearing my agonized screams from a few months ago playing in their heads. They probably think that if I haven't suffered a nervous breakdown yet, it's due to happen soon. Perhaps even on this stage, before the entire crowd. Now _that_ would make for interesting television. It doesn't matter. Lucretia beams out at the crowd, presents them with their tributes and prompts us to shake hands. We grasp hands like we're strangers, me and this man who's been my husband for over a decade. Beetee gives me a placid, emotionless look that he's perfected over the years, a look that clearly says, _Hold it together, Wiress…just until we're off the stage_, and I arrange my face into an equally passive expression, hoping that I look strong and brave on the outside, when on the inside I'm screaming in blind terror. Somehow, the moment passes and we're swept straight through the Justice Building without even a goodbye for those we're leaving behind and right off to the train. I can hear Electra yelling at the Peacekeepers who are holding her back—"She's my sister! I have to say goodbye! You _have_ to let me say goodbye! You can't send her…Wiress, I—" Around her, my nieces and nephews are silently crying, looking terrified at the scene unfolding around them. Bolton stands somewhere behind them in the crowd. I wonder if he's crying, like last time. He'd cried into my father's shoulder shamelessly when I'd been reaped as a teenager, but perhaps he's trying to stand strong, now that he's grown. A Peacekeeper roughly shoves my sister away as we are forcibly loaded onto the tributes' train. Before I can do anything more than lock eyes with her, before I can even form a sentence in my mind, we're speeding away at 200 miles per hour towards our deaths. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.

* * *

We pass the first part of the train ride into the Capitol in stony silence. No one really knows what to say. I still hadn't worked out how I was going to say goodbye to my family and friends, and now it's too late. Beetee is fidgeting absentmindedly with the remote control for the TV. He seems to be in shock. Not that I blame him; never has a reaping been conducted like this before, with the tributes whisked off without seeing their loved ones, to the sounds of shouting and unrest in the crowd. Never has the Hunger Games been conducted like this, either. Friend pitted against friend, lover against lover, husband against wife…what alliances might form? What bonds must be severed? How long will it be before the will to survive rips apart the very fabric of civilization as one by one, we kill each other off?

The last time I was chosen as tribute, I didn't know how much I could trust my district partner. He was young and reminded me more than a little of my brother back home, but I still didn't know what to expect from him, only that there was no way both of us could win, and that there was always a chance of it coming down to one of us killing the other. This horrible fact underlay every single one of the interactions between us, even though I was older and my first instinct would ordinarily have been to protect him.

Things are different this time around. I know I have nothing to fear from Beetee. He's been looking out for me since the very beginning, so it was not surprising in the least that a bond would form between the two of us. What was perhaps a little surprising was what it grew into. And so, what I _do_ have to fear is what will happen to him. To both of us.

I won't kill him. The Capitol can't make me hurt him, because I'll only refuse. Even now, it's oddly comforting to have him here, by my side like he always is…but _not_ as a fellow tribute. I simply can't hurt him, and were he to die in front of me, I'm sure I'd die, too.

Maybe that's our only way out of this. To die together.

* * *

We watch the recap of the reapings after dinner, and my heart sinks as one by one, our friends mount the stage. Some, like Cashmere and Gloss from District One, I've never had much more than polite small talk with. Others, like Seeder and Cecelia, are old friends. None deserve this. Killing them is almost as horrific an idea as killing Beetee, which reminds me of my earlier brainwave.

"Can you make…?" I begin after we switch off the TV and our escort excuses herself to go to bed. Beetee looks up from whatever he's reading and glances at me inquisitively. "Will you make me…?"

"…A promise? What is it, Wiress?"

I think about it for a minute before finding the right words, at which point I'm willing to bet that Beetee already knows what I'm going to say. It took us years to get to this point in our communication.

"Promise me…promise you won't leave me…"

"Alone." As usual, I'd left the word hanging in midair, but he'd picked it up right away where I'd left off. He always can. He nods his head, then replies, "Only if you promise me the same."

* * *

_A promise she's more than willing to keep. And so, I hope everyone enjoyed our first canon-compliant chapter (well, I_ assume_ it's canon-compliant) and is ready and willing to review! I'll be back soon with our next chapter. Once again, so sorry about all that confusion. I number my chapters in Document Manager to prevent something like this from tripping me up, but I added a chapter after I drafted all the others and that kind of messed up my order. If it's not too much to ask, please let me know when you review which chapter (fifteen, '4:15', or sixteen, 'Thirty-Eight') you read and reviewed today. Apparently I've become a scatterbrain. _

_Delilah_


	17. Fourteen

_Happy Friday everyone! Thanks so much for your wonderful reviews and comments...it's been a hell of a week and they really cheered me up. My special thanks go to **Last-Catastrophe,** **Crazy Female LEPrecon**, __**vapiddreamscape,** and **KTstoriesandstuff**. _

_As we lead into the 75th Hunger Games, just keep in mind that any dialogue or anything that looks familiar is probably of Suzanne Collins' invention and should not be accredited to me._

_Enjoy!_

* * *

Fourteen

There are fourteen of us. Fourteen tributes in alliance with the rebels in the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games.

This is what Plutarch Heavensbee tells us when we speak to him in the Capitol. Seven districts are in on the rebels' plot to upset the Third Quarter Quell. Two tributes from each district. If you look at the numbers, you realize with a jolt that we are the majority. We outnumber those tributes that are headed into the arena simply thinking that only one can survive. I wonder why this doesn't comfort me more. Let me go over the list in my head again; maybe that will put my mind at ease.

Katniss and Peeta, last year's victors, don't know much about it. In fact, I'd wager they know next to nothing about the rebels, much less that there's an alliance already in place at all. It's better that way. President Snow seems almost obsessed with the Girl Who Was On Fire, with the effect she has on the crowds. And if he's watching _her_, it means he's not watching the rest of us quite as closely. Any sign of something being out of the ordinary, and I'm sure District Twelve would be the first suspects on Snow's list. So it would be foolish to entrust either of them with any sensitive information. But they're still a part of the rebellion, even if it's without their knowledge. Figureheads, so to speak. So that makes two.

Finnick and Mags from District Four make…well, four. Even though they're a Career District, they seem to miss out on the special treatment doled out to One and Two. Sometimes I forget Four's even a Career District at all, because for all the talk about how life's a lot easier in the Career Districts, I never really got that impression from Four. Finnick's been passed around the Capitol since he was barely legal, younger even than I was. Every time he's in the Capitol, he's got a list of clients, men and women, who pay an exorbitant sum just to own him for a night. My assignations were always rather discreet, but Finnick's sex life is pretty much common knowledge. The only part of it no one knows about is the part where he's forced into it. His reputation across Panem is notorious. I imagine Finnick must have a special hatred for President Snow and his minions. It's no small wonder he's joined the rebels.

Then there are the tributes from Six. I catch myself wondering how much help they'll be. Poor things, their hearts are in the right place, but their bodies are destroyed by years of morphling addiction. They arrived in the Capitol this morning around two hours after we did and never in my life have I seen two tributes (I must get used to thinking of us as tributes, but it's hard when practically none of us are teenagers anymore) looking more dazed and confused. I'm not even entirely sure they know what's happening to them these days, so it seems unfair to say whether they're involved in the rebellion or even actively participating in the Games or not. Do they even have any degree of autonomy anymore? I don't know who I am to judge, though. If I hadn't had Beetee beside me all these years, to catch me when I fall, to fix me when I'm broken, then who's to say that I wouldn't have turned to drugs like they did? Who's to say that we aren't all as messed up as the tributes from Six, but the rest of us are just a bit better at hiding it?

So that's six victors in all so far. Who else have we got?

Johanna and Blight, from District Seven. I must say, I've never trusted Johanna entirely. She's a superb actress; one need only see her Games and try not to get whiplash watching her persona swing from a pathetic, sniveling coward to a ruthless butcher. Seeing this live, on air from the control room was so discomforting that a couple of mentors spit out whatever they were eating or drinking at the time; I distinctly remembering Brutus from Two choking out "What—the—hell—was—_that_?" while gagging on a sandwich as Johanna switched instantaneously from begging for mercy to savagely killing Brutus' tribute, who'd been a favorite to win. Ever since then, she's been one of those people who says what she wants and does what she wants, consequences be damned. She goes through life with an air of simply not caring what other people think, and while I'm not always sure if it's genuine, it still makes me uneasy. So it's natural, I guess, that I'd come to regard Johanna as somewhat untrustworthy. I wouldn't put it past her to stick a knife in my back the second it stands to benefit her…or maybe just the second I somehow annoy her. Even if she is theoretically an ally, I intend to stay as far away from her as possible in the arena, because I'm not entirely sure Plutarch Heavensbee regards her with the appropriate level of caution due to one so cunning.

District Eight, the first district to physically rebel against the Capitol, would naturally include its Quarter Quell tributes in its alliance with the rebels, but I can't help wondering if this idea appeals to the tributes themselves. Old Woof is so ancient and sunken into dementia that I don't know if he really understands what's going on around him to begin with. Yesterday, he mistook me for his daughter at lunch—she's a redhead and looks nothing like me—and tried to force me to eat my vegetables so I'd grow up to be big and strong. Chaff found this supremely amusing and I found it very, _very_ hard to be mature and not throw a roll at his head as he sat there laughing into his plate rather than coming to my rescue. In training, Woof continues along in his ever-present state of confusion, nearly killing himself by eating poisonous bugs. Cecelia, meanwhile, has been close to tears every time I've seen her since arriving in the Capitol. She's in mourning for her children—or, to be more precise, for the life she'd shared with her children. Yes, she talks a great talk about wanting to make a Panem where they don't have to grow up in fear of the reaping, but deep down, I can tell she's terrified of dying in the arena and leaving them motherless and alone. She barely touches her food whenever we eat together, spending the entire mealtime tracing patterns in her sweet potatoes with the tines of her fork and biting down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

Chaff and Seeder from District Eleven bring our number up to twelve. Thanks to the Capitol's slipshod editing of the Victory Tour footage from Eleven, the unrest there is common knowledge back home. District Twelve cozies up to them right away—I think the little girl from Eleven last year was Katniss' ally, if I remember correctly, and Peeta tried to give away some of his winnings to the dead tributes' families, another part of the District Eleven leg of the Victory Tour that most viewers didn't get to see. I'm glad that Chaff and Seeder are our allies, not only because they're both in decent shape (unlike some members of our alliance, and I don't hesitate to include myself in this group) but because they're both genuinely likeable. Chaff makes a lot of really corny jokes that we all laugh at halfheartedly but appreciate nonetheless, because at least _someone's_ trying to lighten the mood. Seeder reminds me a lot of my mother; she does things like remind me to take a piece of fruit with my lunch and asks after my brother and sister, whom she's never actually met. Let's face it, I'm a lot more comfortable trusting my life to Chaff and Seeder than to, say, Johanna. They're at least honest about their intentions. And it doesn't hurt that Seeder's put Chaff on a strict 'no alcohol' diet since they got to the Capitol. We have enough problems to worry about without having to deal with drunk or hungover tributes.

Twelve tributes, plus Beetee and me. That makes fourteen. Fourteen out of twenty-four doesn't seem like terrible odds, when you think about it. But fourteen of us pitted against the Gamemakers, President Snow and his seemingly limitless supply of Peacekeepers…_that's_ another story. It would be disastrous if word of the rebels' plan leaked out, because while the odds aren't the best now, they'd be absolutely terrible if we lost our best weapon-the element of surprise. Besides, if we were found out before the Games, I doubt we'd even be given a one-in-twenty-four chance of survival in the arena; we'd probably be rounded up for execution on the spot. They'd surely want to make us suffer for our treason: for plotting to destroy the arena and sow rebellion across Panem. I wonder what Snow would do to us, if we got caught? Whipping? Hanging? Firing squad? Perhaps he'd electrocute us, in the middle of the City Circle, using Beetee's special wire that we're supposed to be appropriating to destroy the arena. I picture the Peacekeepers wrapping its coils around us, stony-faced; cold metal against thin, flammable prison clothes and bare flesh, and I can practically hear our screams in my head, mingling with the jeers of the watching crowd.

_This won't do, Wiress. Don't get ahead of yourself. You'll just get yourself into a panic. Think of something reassuring, something firm you can hold on to..._

Fourteen of us. We're in the majority. Keep saying it.

* * *

I seem to be running on autopilot from the moment Gloria rouses me the morning of the Games. I eat, but the food tastes like ash in my mouth and it seems to take a special effort to chew. I dress, but my fingers are so clumsy that it takes three tries to button my shirt. I walk to the elevator, accompanied by Gloria, but I don't remember directing myself to do so. I look around, trying to fix the image of our floor in the Training Center in my mind one last time, but I feel removed, as though I'm not really seeing it. As we approach the hovercraft that will take me away, Gloria kisses me goodbye, much like a mother would do to her own daughter, and as I look back at her one last time, I swear I can see her crying. I couldn't cry if I wanted to. My grief is beyond tears.

The trip to the arena by hovercraft is absolutely silent, and I recall for the first time since I was eighteen the strange feeling of being both numb and hypersensitive at the same time. Overall, my body feels completely devoid of accurate sensation, either physical or mental, and yet little things like the hum of the hovercraft, the feeling of my arms in my sleeves and the exact nature of the light reflected off a Peacekeeper's gleaming helmet impress themselves on me. It's like the enormity of what's about to happen, what's _already_ happening to me is just too much to take in, so instead my brain's focusing on processing these little, inconsequential bits of information.

We arrive much too soon for my liking at the arena, and I am guided into the vast underground complex of tunnels and rooms that people in the districts refer to so unflatteringly as the Stockyard. Through the hallways we walk, silent except for the sounds of our footsteps, mine and my silent escorts'. Somewhere in this complex, hidden from my view, are the twenty-three other tributes. Only thirteen of them don't want me dead. The odds sounded better yesterday, when I repeated them endlessly under my breath, trying to comfort myself enough to sleep until Beetee finally muttered, "_Enough_, already, you're keeping me awake. No more numbers! I _told_ you I'd bring you home safe to District Three. No matter what. Now go to sleep." I tried to sleep after that, but the number fourteen—which had seemed so comforting at first—loomed large in my mind, pathetically small after all that, and I ended up lying there in anxious silence, feeling Beetee stroking my hair, losing time. Even this gesture couldn't comfort me, nor stop the litany repeating continuously in my mind. _Fourteen. Fourteen tributes in alliance. Come on, Wiress, even if the odds never were in your favor, at least this time they're better._

I really hope I'm right.

* * *

_Well, I hope you all enjoyed today's update. I believe we've got about three chapters to go! It makes me happy and sad at the same time. _

_Hoping to read your reviews (hint!) soon. A happy weekend to all!_

_Delilah_


	18. 1:40

_Hi, everyone! Hope you're enjoying the story and you're not quite as sad as me about it coming to an end soon._

_Thank-yous go out to **Last-Catastrophe,** for reviewing my last chapter and to **Catching Tomorrow**, who's now following this story._

_Pet peeve: no hyphens allowed in chapter titles. Damn punctuation police._

_On the brighter side: another long chapter for you today! Yay!_

_We're actually in the Games now, so sorry in advance for any scenes of violence, blood or tragedy. Blame Snow. _

_Rule for reading dialogue: If it looks like something you read in _Catching Fire_, then it's not mine. Period._

* * *

One-Forty

_One-forty._ I'm not sure of the exact time that Blight hits the force field, but I estimate it to be around 1:40 AM. The loud zapping sound, the flash of light, then he's on the ground as the blood rain pours down. He takes my sanity with him.

But what ended at one-forty actually began much earlier, at ten o'clock that morning. Because the start of the Seventy-Fifth Hunger Games is where my story begins.

* * *

All 24 tributes stand on their disks, eyeing the gleaming Cornucopia from across the saltwater. An interesting choice of arena, seeing as most of us can't swim. _Water_, I think to myself, _not my element_. _Water and live wire_…

Maybe that's the point. If we all drown at the Cornucopia, then the Games will be over, possibly victor-less (except the born swimmers from Four, unless they get eaten by mutant sharks or something) and President Snow will have his revenge. Just like he's always wanted, I'm sure.

_Focus. Stop thinking about Snow. Focus on the task at hand. _

We'd agreed, last night, that whichever of us reaches the Cornucopia first would grab the wire. I privately doubt that it will be me, but then again, Beetee isn't a swimmer, either.

Mere seconds to go. Yards away, I can see Enobaria baring her teeth ferociously. It makes me shiver; I could never feel comfortable around her. _Home to District 3, _I think to myself in an attempt at calming down, _Beetee promised we'd make it home to District 3. _It's little use, though, because I still shudder as I watch Enobaria ready herself for the inevitable massacre. Through my trembling, I can hear a sloshing sound coming from the peculiar purple belt I'm wearing. It sounds as though it's filled with…

And at that moment, it clicks, and I realize how I'm going to reach the shore. I jump into the water after a minute or two's hesitation, relieved to find that the belt keeps my head above the water, if only just. I've never actually swam before, so this is a completely foreign experience, but after a few experimental kicks I seem to be moving towards the shore. Looking around, I see Brutus staring at me openmouthed, eyes widened in an unflattering expression of dumbfounded shock. I bet he thought I was trying to drown myself.

It's slow going, pushing myself forward, aided by the lifebelt, and by the time I feel the first touch of firm ground beneath my feet, the island housing the Cornucopia has become embroiled in violent chaos. Katniss, Finnick, Peeta and Mags are nowhere to be seen. They'd scurried off into the jungle with a veritable arsenal, without a second thought for us, their allies, though I thought I'd seen Katniss falter, like she was trying to make up her mind about waiting for us. Oh, that's right, she probably doesn't know we're in alliance anyway. We'll just have to track her down. Meanwhile, the predictable Career alliance has formed and started picking off the stragglers, one by one. I see Brutus thrust a spear into Cecelia's abdomen right in front of the Cornucopia, and I think of her fears for her children, and how he'd squeezed my hand last night after the interviews—not so much in a supportive way, as all twelve districts offered a show of solidarity in the face of tyranny, but rather as if he'd wanted to crush it and destroy me, barehanded. The male morphling addict from District 6 is wandering vaguely into the shallows. He's so unhinged that I can't see him lasting long, and this saddens me. He suddenly grabs me by the hand and seems to be leading me to shore. I'm grateful for an ally, _any_ ally; the sight of a friendly, if somewhat addled face comforts me, so I follow him mutely. That is, until Cashmere appears out of nowhere and buries a knife in his chest.

The morphling crumbles, staining the sand crimson, and Cashmere raises her knife again, still dripping blood.

"Might as well go for the double, Nuts. Nothing personal," she smirks, shaking her long, waterlogged blonde curls over her shoulder. I don't need a mirror to know that my eyes are widening in terror. I haven't even got the wire yet!

I start backing away from her, trying to think my way out of this mess. I have no weapons yet; I don't even have the spool of wire. I trip and land in the shallow water with a splash as Cashmere continues to stalk forward, eyeing me as an easy kill. Typical District 3. I reach a hand behind me, desperately feeling around for something—anything—that I could use to defend myself, searching inside me for the girl who'd killed five tributes—two of them in close combat—back in her first Hunger Games. Where is 'deadly Wiress' when I need her? Why is 'terrified Wiress' the only one making an appearance? My fingers close around a small rock. Nothing particularly lethal. Still, it's _something_.

Cashmere leers down at me, her next victim, but I watch her smirk turn to an expression of outrage as I fling the rock, _hard_, at her face. It leaves a bloody welt right above her right eye. As she swipes away some of the blood with her hand, her beautiful eyes narrowed in anger, I can tell that she's decided to make District 3 pay. So much for my death being quick and painless.

Cashmere lunges forward and I instinctively put up my arms to protect my face, even though I know in my heart that this is completely futile. It's all over. I've failed.

But the sharp pain and the blood never come. I lower my arm slightly to chance a look and see Cashmere locked in combat with our resident loose cannon, Johanna Mason. They're fighting fiercely, armed only with knives and taking absolutely no notice of me, so it only takes me about half a second to make up my mind and flee as quickly as my legs can carry me.

"Nuts!" shouts Johanna's voice sharply from behind as Cashmere runs past, abandoning her fight with Johanna in anticipation of easier victims, pursuing one of the District 10 victors with murder in her eyes. "Get back here!"

I keep running away from Johanna. Ordinarily, I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her. There is no way I'm sticking around to be dismembered with one of Johanna's trademark axes and sent home to District 3 in pieces.

Johanna growls in frustration, breaks into a run and suddenly I feel her fingers closing firmly around my wrist. She's much bigger, heavier, stronger than me. If she pulled me back hard enough, she could probably break my arm right here. There's no use in fighting her.

"Allies, okay? Let's find Volts and get out of here before you get yourselves killed," she says roughly, all the while dragging me toward the Cornucopia. I'm in disbelief. Allies? Me and Johanna Mason? Had I been blind to what Plutarch had seen, when he'd said there'd be people here to protect me? Had this been Johanna's intention and Plutarch's plan all along? If so, he's got an interesting sense of humor, because Johanna's never showed me—or _anyone_ from my district, for that matter—even an ounce of friendliness or amity, so trusting her could be a fatal error. Not to mention an odd move in the eyes of the viewers at home-I wonder how _they're_ going to interpret our unforeseen alliance. Yet somehow, my intuition tells me to go with her, just as it had told me to trust Plutarch Heavensbee in the first place, so I follow. It's never failed me yet.

We hide as best we can in the shade of the Cornucopia as Enobaria rushes past, waving a bloody knife in one hand and beckoning to her district partner with the other, seemingly signaling for them to gang up on Chaff and Seeder, who have formed a predictable alliance and are, of course, secretly in league with the rest of us rebels. Wondering vaguely whose blood that is on Enobaria's knife and how long it will be before she resorts to using her teeth as a weapon, I follow Johanna to the mouth of the Cornucopia. It is there that I find the answer to my first question, and it's one that I don't like one bit.

Beetee is leaning heavily against the side of the Cornucopia, struggling to pull himself to his feet. He has a jagged gash extending about six inches down his back, bleeding profusely. He's clutching a large spool of fine, golden wire to his chest, as if daring any of us to steal it from him before he's breathed his last.

I feel like my heart actually stops for a moment. I'd forgotten how that sensation feels; how your breath catches in your chest and you just freeze, _exist_, for a moment before you can breathe and move and think again. Johanna sighs, as though Beetee's injury—_likely a fatal one_, I think in desolation—is just an additional setback in her plans for the day. But I don't have time to dwell on her lack of empathy. I'm too busy being absolutely terrified for him, because I still haven't worked out how I could ever live without him and now it seems like I'm being forced to do just that. I rush over and lower him to the ground, so that he can lean up against my shoulder, and I gently coax the wire out of his grip.

"Don't worry," I soothe him, "you're going to be alright…"

I wonder who I'm trying to convince more, Beetee or myself.

Blight, Johanna's district partner from Seven, appears alongside Johanna and takes a good long look at me trying to stem the flow of blood from Beetee's stab wound using nothing but my fingers, which can't be sanitary. He watches for a moment with an odd, softened expression on his face, as though trying to fully understand and categorize the nature of our relationship and its overall effect on group dynamics. "Well, _this_ complicates things," he says simply, not bothering to explain what _'this'_ entails. I could hit him for his nonchalant tone, but before I can, before Johanna can start sputtering in rage, he heaves both Beetee and me to our feet and leads us all into the jungle and away from the massacre.

The air in the jungle is heavy and humid, and before we can get very far, Blight stops us under a tall tree. He scans the dense foliage. "Any sign of them?"

"None. The trees are too thick," says Johanna. "But they couldn't have gotten too far, not with Mags in tow, unless Finnick carried her." Apparently we're not hiding the fact that we're in search of District Four from the audience. Our intentions for Four, however, may remain ambiguous for the moment.

"So we'll just have to keep looking until we find them," replies Blight decisively, pulling some foliage from a nearby tree and passing it to me. "It'll help stop the bleeding," he says, noting my puzzled expression. He's from District 7—lumber—so I accept his knowledge of trees and leaves without comment, even though I doubt even he's ever see trees like these before.

Johanna climbs a nearby tree, shouting down that she'll try to spot any possible allies. Beetee takes advantage of the break to rest and let me keep trying to tend to his wound. Blight looks over my shoulder, giving suggestions.

As Beetee leans against the tree to close his eyes for a minute, presumably in an effort to master his pain, I look away and scan the landscape. Blight throws himself down on the ground beside me, looking expectant.

"So?" he asks. I look at him, waiting for more. "What?" I ask, nonplussed.

"You and Volts. What's going on there?"

I look away, unwilling to discuss this with Blight, especially on camera. We've managed to keep gossip to a minimum for twenty years, since I came home from my Games, before there was even anything to gossip about. There's no need to lay all our cards on the table now. I could happily go to my grave without all of Panem knowing the full story about the two of us. Which, come to think of it, may be _exactly_ where I'm headed.

"You're not answering me, Nuts. Come on, I _know_ there's something going on between you. I saw the way you were looking at him."

I turn back to face Blight, much too quickly to be seen as a strictly casual response. "I don't know what you…" I begin, but he sees right through me. Damn. I hate it when that happens.

"I've seen the way he looks at _you_, too. Don't think I don't know what all that means."

He's smarter than he looks, but when I look up at him, cheeks burning slightly pink, I see he's smiling, not unkindly. He's not teasing me. If anything, he looks…touched.

"I just wish…it didn't have to end this way," I say in resignation.

"Who says it does?" he asks in surprise. He raises my chin with his two forefingers, then adds, "Don't worry, Nuts, I won't let him die on you." This is quite a promise to make, considering that this is the Hunger Games and all but one of us are supposed to die at some point, but it's still comforting to hear it. And with that, he marches over to Beetee and starts to help him up as Johanna emerges from the tree with no idea where to start looking for the others.

I think Blight and I could be friends.

* * *

We never stop for long. Johanna keeps us pushing ahead relentlessly, looking for any sign of the victors from Four and Twelve. There's no sign of them, though, and likewise no sign of drinkable water, and as the hours stretch on endlessly, our pace slows and we begin to feel the effects of dehydration.

"There must…be water…_somewhere_…" pants Johanna. It's dark now, but the air is still oppressively heavy. It's like trying to breathe soup. The smog back home causes a lot of breathing problems, mine among them, but it looks like the District 7 victors are struggling as much as we are. Johanna's leaning against a tree, her mouth slightly open.

"There _has_ to be," insists Blight, earning him a mutinous look from Johanna.

"Well, where is it, then?" she scoffs. "Just how big is this place, anyway? We've been wandering around all day! No food! No water! No sign of anyone!"

I can tell Johanna's working herself up into the rant she'd been holding in all day, so in an effort to tune her out, I turn my attention back to Beetee. The bleeding's slowed considerably, but it hasn't stopped, and he's alarmingly pale, even for someone from District Three. Blight has been supporting more and more of his weight as he grew weaker and weaker throughout the day. He's sitting propped up against a tree, squinting at me in the dark, seemingly struggling to keep me in focus as I sit down beside him.

"At least we got it," he murmurs, nodding imperceptibly at the wire in my hand. I nod in agreement.

"You were very brave, you know. I've always been secretly terrified of…"

"Enobaria? Well, at least she didn't use her teeth this time, so I suppose that's _something_ to be grateful for. No telling _where_ those have been."

I smile, but I can tell it doesn't hide my concern. What will I do if Beetee dies? He's the only one who really understands me.

"You remember what to do with it," he says, once again indicating the spool of wire. "I'm sorry that you'll probably have to do it all alone. It wasn't meant to happen this way. I'm sorry, Wiress…"

It's not just our mission he's apologizing for. Convinced that his time left is limited, all he regrets is leaving me here alone. _He's trying to say goodbye_, I realize with a jolt. I shake my head fiercely, then stop, because the lack of water makes my brain feel like it's rattling around inside my skull. But I flat out refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that Beetee is dying. We're a team. _Nuts and Volts_, they call us. There _is_ no Nuts without Volts, not anymore. And there is absolutely no way that I would ever imagine leaving this arena without him. I'm experiencing just what I'd feared, all those years ago when I tried to persuade Beetee that to fall in love was foolish and dangerous.

"Don't be ridiculous," I say, "you're going to be fine. Here," I add, placing the spool of wire in his hand, "you take it. You'll want to have it on hand once…"

"…Once we find the others," he finishes for me, accepting the wire but looking unconvinced. Placing my hands over his, I close his fingers around the spool. Even though it's so hot out, his hands are cold. My mother's hands were cold, too, the night that she…_don't think about that, Wiress_. _He's going to be fine. He_ has_ to be fine._

Suddenly, a loud gong sounds, jolting the four of us out of our conversations and shutting Johanna up. Another follows. More gongs. Twelve in all. As if the Gamemakers are telling us the hour, or something.

I don't have much time to reflect on the strange gongs, though, because a brilliant light flashes through the sky, drawing all our eyes to a tree not too far away as the lightning strikes it.

"No fire," I muse, waiting for the bolt of pure electricity to cause the tree to burst into flames. I'm surprised that no one else comments on this. Johanna and Blight know trees, and Beetee and I know electricity.

"At last," croaks Johanna. Her voice is hoarse from dehydration and from shouting at Blight for the past ten minutes or so. "Now we'll finally get some rain."

Blight grins ironically. "We went looking for water, but now water's come and found us," he quips. No one laughs. There is nothing remotely funny about this situation. "Come on," he adds to the group at large, "we should keep moving. You know, just in case the Careers come out hunting."

No one can point out a flaw in his argument, so Johanna makes ready to continue on our way, while Blight helps me struggle to pull Beetee to his feet.

* * *

The lightning continues, on and on, for what we estimate to be the better part of an hour. It periodically illuminates our path through the jungle, the endless trees and nonexistent drinking water. It also illuminates our faces, allowing us to study each other's expressions.

Johanna's face is a transparent display of annoyance-annoyance that the other victors have so easily eluded us, annoyance at her thirst and discomfort, and annoyance at the part she'd agreed to play in the rebellion: that of District 3's official bodyguard. Blight's features are set in determination. Every now and then, he tries to say something to inspire us all, commenting that we can't be far now, or else that the rain has to start soon. We're not sure we believe him. I'm not even sure he believes himself. He's probably just trying to counteract Johanna's oppressive negativity.

Beetee grows paler and more drained-looking with every step he takes. His eyes have acquired a glazed look that suggests semiconsciousness, and as Blight tries to help him make his way through the trees, I find myself wishing with every fiber of my being that someone out there watching will take pity on us and become our sponsor, and send me some medicine to give him for the pain, or a first-aid kit, or something. How can they watch this suffering and do nothing? If Beetee dies and I somehow get out of here, only to find out that all the sponsors were sending stuff to handsome Finnick Odair, then—friendship, alliance, rebellion be damned—I _will_ electrocute him in his sleep. Or maybe the sponsors. Or maybe both. In the meantime, I keep my murderous impulses to myself and try to comfort Beetee as best I can.

I must look kind of dazed to my allies and the viewers at home, because even if my tired, anxious, thirsty, thoroughly abused body is trudging through the jungle beside the other three, I'm lost deep in my own thoughts, trying to sort out the strange nature of this waterless jungle, the twelve bells (which I'm almost positive signaled midnight; I'm just not sure _why_) and the lengthy lightning storm that failed to set any fires or destroy any trees. Something here just isn't normal.

Speaking of the lightning, the strikes suddenly die out, as dark clouds gather overhead in the equally dark sky. "It's the rain, at last!" Blight reassures us, sounding almost jubilant, like a young boy again. Sure enough, the skies look poised for a downpour to finally quench our unbearable thirst.

We can hear the patter of raindrops against the leaves before we can actually see the rain, it being so dark. Blight stretches out the hand that isn't supporting Beetee as though to catch some of it, and Johanna tilts her head back in anticipation. I bet the TV audience is laughing at us.

The drops begin to fall faster. I can feel them hit my cheeks, streaming down like tears. Then Blight points at me in horror.

"_That's_ not rain! It's—!"

Reaching up in trepidation, I wipe my face with my hand. My fingertips, pale and ghostly in the dark, come away smeared with thick, crimson blood just as the skies open up.

The blood pours down, oppressively hot and heavy, drenching us all thoroughly and making it impossible to see. I try to cry out to the others, but I merely end up with a mouthful of the horrible stuff, which I spit out in disgust, though I can't fully rid myself of the taste of it. It fills me with an inexplicable sense of panic. Someone, probably Johanna, manages to choke out something that sounds like "—ake cover!"

We run, blindly, mutely through the trees, for what seems like forever, trying to shield our eyes and keeping a hand outstretched to feel our way. Johanna runs headlong into a blood-soaked tree and is rewarded with a mouthful of blood rain when she tries to curse the foul thing for being in her way. Blight plucks a few low-hanging fronds from a tree and tries to fashion a wide-brimmed hat to keep the blood off his face, but only succeeds in making himself look like an idiot and convincing me that we are live on every single TV screen in Panem right now. The Capitol audiences are loving this. Us four, soaked in blood, wandering around cluelessly…

Lost in thought as usual, I walk right into something solid but unsteady, knocking it to the ground. I reach down to examine it. My fingertips brush_…_eyeglasses? Beetee.

I pull him up and wrap an arm around his waist to steady him, very aware of the fact that the two of us are covered in blood and I have no way of knowing how much of it is his. Banishing this upsetting thought from my mind, I shield my eyes to try and look for the others. It's getting a little easier to see…perhaps the terrible rain is finally stopping? Or am I just getting used to it?

With Beetee trusting most of his weight to me, it's slow going, but I manage to spot two shadowy shapes that have to be Johanna and Blight.

There's no doubt about it, the rain really is stopping now. I can see the path ahead of me more clearly and am beginning to notice the deplorable state of each of us. Through the blood rain that is still falling, I can even spot one of the six-inch squares of wavy haze that indicate another flaw in the force field around the arena. Another chink in the armor.

"Come on!" calls Blight, who's clearly agitated from an hour of being thoroughly bathed in blood. "Let's get out of here before it starts up again! Quickly!" He turns and starts to run, right in the direction of the force field…

"Wait!" I shout as I realize that he's not stopping. I leave Beetee's side to run after him, but before I can take more than two steps the rest of my words are drowned out by a deafening zapping sound that takes me back to electrical accidents home in District 3, and even to another arena, years ago. Surging currents, flickering lights overhead, sizzling, the smell of burnt flesh…Blight is thrown backwards and lands in a crumpled heap at my feet. He isn't moving.

Johanna runs over, leaving Beetee trailing behind, clinging to the trees for support as he approaches.

I crouch down right next to Blight, who doesn't seem to be breathing. I _saw_ it; why couldn't I stop him? I rest my ear against his chest, listening hard. Nothing.

I could've done something, surely? But I didn't.

I think I killed him.

"Blight? Blight!" shouts Johanna, shoving me out of her way, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. I know, by the sinking feeling inside me, that there's nothing we can do. This happens, sometimes, in the factories back home. Electrocution.

I try to explain this to Johanna, but I can't. The words won't come. My thoughts are completely disorganized, flitting around my numb brain like startled moths. How did this happen? I can't keep my focus on what's going on, and keep flashing between the jungle and District 3 and the arena from my first Hunger Games, where a sequence of traps of my own design killed off my adversaries and sent me home. Everything has just stopped making sense, and it scares me.

The scene before me presents itself like a highly-colored dream. Blight, lifeless on the jungle floor. Johanna standing over his body, screaming in frustration something about having to do it all alone. Behind her, Beetee slides slowly down the side of the tree he's leaning against, slipping finally into unconsciousness.

A cannon sounds. Blight is dead. He'd tried to help us. I'd tried to warn him. I'd tried, but failed. I'd failed and now he's dead. Beetee, too, is surely dying—my mentor, my best friend, my lover, my family. There's nothing I can do to save him, either. He saved me so many times, but _I_ _can't save him_. I'm every bit as worthless as Johanna implies in her frustrated rant, which is echoing through the stillness of the night. I hear screams emanating from a nearby stretch of jungle, but they echo in my head as if the screamers and I are on opposite ends of a long tunnel. I can't help any of those victors, either. I can't even help myself. All is lost.

I struggle to speak, to give voice to the crushing sense of hopelessness that's overcoming me, but all I can manage is a groan. It helps, though. I feel surprisingly better. I hum a bit—a vaguely musical-sounding note—and discover that it comforts me. It makes me think of those gongs we'd heard. Twelve…one for every district, one for each hour. So I continue, whatever random tune bursts into my head, as Johanna crossly shakes Beetee into semiconsciousness and tries to support his weight. She fixes her eyes on me.

"Nuts? Shut up and let's go," she says, but I just look vaguely around, still humming.

"Nuts!" she shouts, her face mere inches from mine now. I look at her in mild surprise that she's so close, and sing a line or two of a children's tune I recall from District 3. It takes me back to better times, to my sister singing lullabies to my brother and me, even to those long-ago days when my mother was alive and the world seemed so full of promise.

Johanna looks both incredulous and livid at the same time, and part of me wonders how I can find this even remotely funny—which I _do_, somehow. "Volts," she calls over her shoulder, "you understand her. What's she going on about? What's wrong with her?"

When no response comes, Johanna looks over her shoulder. Beetee's out cold; still alive, since we haven't heard a cannon, but probably just hanging on. I shouldn't be singing softly to myself, not now, but it keeps me from having to say goodbye to Beetee. He can't die without me saying goodbye. He'll hold on until I can face it. He promised me. He promised me he wouldn't ever leave me.

Experimentally, Johanna raises her hand and hits me, hard, right across the face. It stings, but I keep singing. _Not ready yet, Beetee, I'm not ready…_

Probably resigning herself to the idea that the rebels are somehow punishing her, Johanna drags Beetee off in search of the beach, me trailing behind.

It can't be much past two in the morning. Only twenty minutes or so since Blight's death, and I'm not feeling any better. I wonder how long I'll stay this way; whether I'll ever be right again.

* * *

_Uh-oh, poor Wiress. In the next chapter, you get to watch me try to convey exactly what's going on in her head while she's having her little breakdown. Just to give you the heads-up, we've got two chapters to go, plus an epilogue._

_On that note, please review, because you're running out of chances to do so!_

_Hope everyone has a wonderful day,_

_Delilah_


	19. Twelve

_Hi, readers!_

_We're closing in on the final couple of chapters here, and I'm sure all of you know how this is going to end, but I'm trying not to think about it, because I've already killed Wiress off in a story once before and it was awful. _

_Anyway, I offer my sincere thanks to my most recent reviewers, **KTstoriesandstuff** and** Last-Catastrophe**. Love you guys!_

_Like I've said, any dialogue taken from _Catching Fire_ is the property of Suzanne Collins. As are the characters, and the setting, and...well, just assume I own nothing and we'll be good to go._

* * *

Twelve

_Twelve_ is the number of gongs that tips me off about the traps in the Quarter Quell arena. Though they puzzled me from the very first time I heard them, I pushed them to the back of my mind when we fought our way through the jungle, then through the blood rain. But since Blight hit that force field, I've been preoccupied with the arena. It looms large in my fractured mind.

_We seem to be skirting the circumference of a circle, and not a large one at that_, I think through the buzzing that fills my brain. Why such a small arena? And the succession of horrors—the twelve enigmatic chimes; the hour of strange, noncombustible lightning, then the blood rain…_that_ seemed to last about an hour, too, as if there's some absurd logic to this torture…

And it hits me with a jolt like when your finger gets zapped by a socket. The circle. The hourly traps. The sea, a small circle within the bigger one, interspersed with twelve evenly placed spokes of land, dividing 24 victors into 12 identical wedges. And the twelve midnight chimes that had started it all.

_The arena is a clock._

The arena is a clock! It's so obvious! The way we'll survive is by simply avoiding each hour's trap. We can use our knowledge of the workings of the arena to our advantage when the time comes to destroy it. We now have a weapon that no one else possesses.

I have to tell them. Beetee, Johanna—before the three of us get caught in yet _another_ one of the clock's deadly wedges, I need to warn my companions.

_Stop!_ I try to say, _I've figured it out! The arena's configured as a clock face, with different attacks programmed to go off cyclically every hour! We need to plan, to sort this out, and above all, we can't let ourselves be trapped again!_

But all that comes out is, "Tick, tock!" Then again, more urgently, "Tick, tock!" I'm convinced I've finally lost it. After all these years of hanging on by a thread, I've finally lost my mind.

"Shut _up_, Nuts!" pants Johanna, still dragging Beetee downhill through the trees. She seems completely unwilling to stop until we reach the beach. Beetee opens his eyes briefly, and I stare at him pointedly, willing him to understand. _If he loves me, he'll understand_, I think desperately, but he just looks back at me sadly and brushes my cheek with the backs of his fingers. If he thinks he's lost me already, I swear I'll die. No one else can possibly break through my newfound madness. If he gives up, it's all over.

* * *

We walk. And we walk. For hours. I repeat it, "Tick, tock," tirelessly as we go, hoping against hope that I can either get someone to understand me or regain the ability to form sentences again. At one point, I simply grab Johanna by the shoulders, hoping to make her understand, but she merely slaps me. Again. I'm getting hit a lot today.

The jungle starts to clear; light is visible ahead, and as we approach, we hear the sound of what seems to be an immense tidal wave hitting the shore. But it doesn't hit us. Of course; it's wired for another segment of the clock. It all fits.

As we reach open air, Johanna breathes a sigh that I attribute to relief. With some open space to work with, I start spinning in circles. Maybe if Johanna can visualize what I'm trying to say, the she'll understand. If not, it at least helps me clear the endless images of circles and clock faces from my mind.

Apparently not. Worn out from exhaustion and dehydration, Johanna overbalances, drops Beetee and shoves me roughly to the ground. She's seething with frustration, that much is clear as day.

"Johanna?" calls a familiar voice.

"Finnick!" cries Johanna, her relief tangible.

Finnick Odair runs through the shallows toward us, followed at a distance by Katniss and Peeta. All three of them look frightening: greenish and scaly. I don't spare the changes in their appearance a second thought, though, because I have bigger problems. Maybe _they'll_ understand. I need to let them know…

Johanna tries to explain the events that have befallen our little group since the start of the Games in a tired voice, but I'm insistent that Katniss, at least, should get my message. Katniss, who'd been kind to Beetee and I, who we'd taught about the weak spots in the force field, with whom we'd shared coded information about the uprisings in District 3…

I leap to my feet, which sends my head reeling, and start trying to warn Katniss, who looks utterly perplexed. Johanna, meanwhile, is talking about a mile a minute to Finnick.

"Tick, tock. Tick, tock," I murmur, still wandering in circles. Can't you understand me? _What_ they must be thinking of me back home…Bolton and Electra are probably watching, horrified, shaking their heads in shame.

"Yeah, we know. Tick, tock. Nuts is in shock," replies Johanna.

In shock? She must know I'm not crazy! This is oddly comforting, because while 'crazy' is a life sentence, 'shock' can be cured. At least, that's the assumption I'm staking my hopes on. I run over to get Johanna's attention, but I'm still unsteady from two days without food or water, and I collide directly into Johanna, earning me another violent shove to the ground.

"Just stay down, will you?" she snarls, but Katniss intervenes.

"Lay off her," she shouts, and I brighten. Katniss will give me a chance. I'll make her see, somehow.

Johanna is inconsolable. The stress she'd been accumulating all this time—no food, no water, the blood rain, Blight's electrocution, then dragging Beetee through the jungle and looking out for me after my breakdown—gets the better of her. She hauls off and slaps Katniss, and I make what I hope Katniss can interpret as a sympathetic noise. Johanna's been slapping _me_ like that all day. But I kind of deserve it, I guess. I'm trapped inside a madwoman.

Anyway, Johanna continues to scream, "Lay off her? Who do you think got them out of that bleeding jungle for you? You—" followed by all sorts of abuse directed toward Katniss as Finnick tosses her in the saltwater to calm her down. Good idea, Finnick—her system's clearly overheating, in more ways than one.

I look up, wide-eyed, at Katniss, who takes me by the hand and leads me to the water. She probably wants me to wash off all this terrible blood, but I can't do anything until I warn Katniss about the clock. I can't bear the thought of Katniss—who's even now trying to save Beetee's life—going into that jungle unprepared. I sit here, powerless, wringing my hands in agitation.

When Katniss returns, she doesn't speak much. Maybe she's as worried about Beetee as I am, or maybe my rantings just scare her. They certainly scare me. She washes me clean as if I were her child, and I don't resist. But I grow even more fearful at the thought of being misunderstood again, of causing any more deaths through my inaction. Watching more friends die as a result of my inability to communicate might just tip me over the edge.

"Tick, tock," I repeat, again and again.

"Yes, tick, tock," Katniss replies.

She's getting it! She's starting to understand! Well, either that or she's humoring me. It's a distinct possibility. Maybe I can explain better—

I crawl up next to Katniss as she's chatting with Johanna, indicating the jungle with my eyes and willing the two of them to understand my warning. Johanna stalks off, but Katniss at least pretends to listen. She lies me down and soothes me to sleep. She strokes my arm to calm me very much like Beetee would do. It's been forever since I've rested.

* * *

I sleep fitfully.

My dreams are all of clocks dripping blood, of mechanically precise death-traps claiming all my friends and allies, one by one, until I'm left speechless and utterly alone, still trapped in the prison of my mind.

Is this how it will end?

Will the jungle be the death of them all, as I sit here, trapped in my madness? I see Plutarch Heavensbee looking on as Caesar Flickerman announces me to the crowd: "Ladies and gentlemen: The victor of the 75th Annual Hunger Games!" But I'm unable to speak to any of them, yet another mute victim of the arena. An Avox of the mind.

Or perhaps, as my allies die off, Enobaria will simply make her way out of the trees and rip my throat open with her teeth.

As I bleed to death at her feet, crimson blood dribbling down her chin, I hear another round of twelve chimes. It's clearly signaling the end.

"Tick, tock," I murmur in my sleep, even more desperate to save them before it's too late.

But _this_ time, someone understands.

* * *

_And there we have it! The methods behind the madness. I refused to believe that Wiress simply lost it at some point in the arena, so instead I reimagined her breakdown as a sort of super-intense post-traumatic stress. She's still in there, though. I hate to leave you on a cliffhanger (oh, come on, you know what's gonna happen next!), but I'm afraid I must. Our next chapter, I'm terribly sorry to say, is Wiress' final one. I can't believe I just typed that without crying. Anyway, two chapters to go-one part of the story and one epilogue. Please review and let me know what you're thinking and I'll be back ASAP with our penultimate update._

_Until then, my friends,_

_Delilah_


	20. Fiftieth

_Good evening, everyone!_

_Well, we knew it was coming. I regret to inform you all that this is the last chapter of Wiress' story. It's not the last chapter of_ our_ story, though-we have an epilogue to look forward to. But just to give everyone the head's-up: the end is near. Or_ here,_ if you prefer._

_Special thanks to __**vapiddreamscape** and **Last-Catastrophe** for their extremely thoughtful reviews of chapter 19._

_As usual, any bits of dialogue that look familiar probably come from _Catching Fire_ and are therefore the property of Suzanne Collins...and not me._

_Oh, and warning-this chapter contains violence and a prolonged death sequence. Just saying. _

* * *

Fiftieth

The fiftieth percentile signifies the middle of a sample. Consistent average. In a field of twenty-four, twelve is the exact middle. That's how I place in the 75th Hunger Games: as number twelve out of twenty-four. In the fiftieth percentile. Not the best showing I've ever had, not by far.

It's remarkable how quickly the odds can change. One minute, I'm driven to despair, convinced that everything is lost, that I'll never speak again and I'm doomed to watch my friends die at the mercy of the arena's traps, traps that I can't warn them about. The next minute, somehow, the message breaks through and we're saved. I can't explain how it feels—it's like the sun breaking through the clouds. I feel lighter, my head feels clearer, and for the first time since Blight's death and my total breakdown I find enough hope to consider that maybe we'll all get out of here, that I'll get my head together and be okay again. Sitting by the Cornucopia, safe from the Gamemakers' traps, it's almost peaceful, because we're all looking out for one another.

All it takes is a second for that to change. The silver flash of a knife and it's all over.

* * *

"Clean it, will you?" It's such a simple request, one that really didn't have to be made in the first place. Beetee's spool of golden wire is covered in dried blood, as though either of us wants to carry around a reminder of what happened to him at the Cornucopia, of the dark realization that death might finally part us, of the terrifying hour we spent in the blood rain. Of course I take it from him. Of course I kneel down by the water's edge, dunking the coil of wire in the saltwater and scrubbing it shiny clean with my fingers. If anything, I'm comforted that I can do this one small service for him, even if I couldn't protect him the way I'd wanted to. Something ominous lurks at the back of my mind, though; I've got a feeling that it isn't safe to be over here by the water all alone, so I start singing again, if only to let the others know I'm okay. It comforts me, a little bit of normalcy I can hold tight in a world spinning out of control.

The first thing that startles me is the appearance of a solid wall of ominous-looking fog. I'm sure Katniss had mentioned a poisonous fog to me earlier, so this must be what she'd meant. "Two," I say, pointing, and Katniss confirms my suspicions. Peeta looks up from what he's doing. "Like clockwork. You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress," he says. I debate whether he's genuinely impressed or whether he's patronizing me, but decide that I don't really care. Let him think I'm a madwoman, for all I care. I'm simply relieved that _they_ figured it out, what I'd been trying to tell them all along. I give him a smile and go back to my work just as Beetee joins the conversation in my defense. I could always count on him to stand up for me, even—and especially—when I was unwilling or unable to do so for myself. He goes on about how smart I am, about my intuition—my special gift—and I only hope I can do him proud and use it to protect us all. I haven't done such a great job so far.

It isn't long before my so-called special gift is put to the test.

I sit bolt upright, having been seized by the sudden feeling that something is terribly, terribly wrong. There's a dark shape under the water, a dark shape that looks like…

I stop singing and jump to my feet, but I'm grabbed from behind by Gloss. "Time's up," he hisses in my ear, and for a split second I wonder if _he's_ figured out the arena's secret, too. I try to scream, to warn the others, but he slides a knife across the base of my throat, and all I can feel is searing pain as Katniss appears from behind the Cornucopia and he drops me to the ground as her arrow pierces his temple.

I lie there, wishing it would just end quickly, feeling terribly alone. All around me, there's a frenzied battle taking place. No one seems to care that I'm dying. Or maybe I'm already dead? It _can't_ be; the pain's supposed to go _away_ when you die, and yet I still feel the torture of the knife slicing into my skin.

I'm staring up, into the sun, slightly annoyed that my last moments have to play out on national TV. I don't want my family to see this. The salty air burns like fire with every ragged breath I take, and I can't even cry out in agony. I'm not even sure I want to, anyway. The pain, so sharp at first, seems to be receding. I'm less and less aware of everything around me. It's not so bad, really. My head's perfectly clear now. Maybe I can just drift off peacefully, like I did when Katniss watched me sleep…

My fingers close convulsively, as if I'm reaching out to grab someone's hand, seeking comfort in my final minutes. I'm already holding something, though. Our wire! I use the last of my strength to clench my fingers around it as tight as I can. Beetee nearly died for this wire; over my dead body will it leave my possession unless I know it's in safe hands. Okay, upon reflection that might have been a bad choice of words, considering my current circumstances…

More than anything, I wish someone were here with me. It's so scary to die alone.

I haven't thought about it properly since District Seven and I lay side-by-side, bleeding to death in my first Hunger Games, but now that I'm convinced the end has come for me, I can't help wishing that someone would hold me and tell me _it'll be alright_, even if it's a lie, just to comfort me as I die.

Maybe that's a selfish wish. After all, I remember how distraught _I'd_ been when I thought Beetee was dying. Why would I wish that anguish on someone else? I try to reverse the roles in my mind and picture Beetee wearing the same panicked expression I'd had on as I tried to comfort him in what we both thought were his final minutes. In my mind's eye, he looks almost inconsolable. He takes my hand and I try to squeeze it, but my fingers don't seem to be working properly anymore. His hands are warm now; I guess _I'm_ the one who's going cold, this time.

"Wiress," dream-Beetee says, in a shaky voice I barely recognize, "Don't worry. You're going to…going to be fine." It's remarkable how, even in my imagination, he sounds just like I did…when was it? Yesterday? His tone is a striking mix of terrified and a sort of false bravado that's totally unconvincing.

Beetee would probably sense that I don't believe his words of encouragement, and his grip on my hand would tighten as he'd insist, "You're _not_ going to die. You promised, remember? You promised you wouldn't leave me here alone." This last bit comes out sounding almost like a plea, and even though it's all in my mind and it's not the real Beetee begging for me to stay with him, I feel guilty for leaving him behind.

"Hold on, Wiress…" says the voice in my head.

_Hold on…_

But there's nothing left for me to hold on to. Someone will think to take the wire. They'll get it back to Beetee and he can wire the arena. I _tried_. Tried and failed to do something big, to save countless lives when in reality, I couldn't even preserve my own. Sure, it wasn't meant to happen this way, but what else can I say?

Wait a second! There _is_ one thing I have to say. To the one person I love more than anyone else, the person I'd promised I would never leave alone. I broke that promise. I gather up all my strength and try to speak, but I can't. There's no one here to hear me, anyway.

_I'm sorry, Beetee, I…_ I think to myself. It's funny how, even in my head, the thought comes out incomplete. No one completes it for me, because then it all goes black.

I hear the thunder of cannons, but I can't focus enough to count them. Could one be for me? If so, this is the last they'll see of me. Wiress, District 3 victor and casualty of the 75th Hunger Games. I place 12th, solidly in the middle of the pack. Fiftieth percentile, for the first and last time in my life.

I wonder if it's all they'll remember.

* * *

_Sob. _

_That was sad. But necessary, unfortunately, because if I just cut off in the middle of the Games, I'd be feeling a definite sense of anticlimax and I'm sure you would, too. But all the same, I would've loved a happy ending. Stay tuned for the epilogue and in the meantime, please review! _

_Delilah_


	21. Epilogue: Infinity

_And here we are, come to the end at last. After twenty chapters of reminiscences and the numbers that marked Wiress' life, we've reached the end. I feel almost guilty calling in the services of another narrator when she's guided us through the whole story, but I like the way it worked out anyway. Besides, after thirty-eight years of narration through good times and bad, I think Wiress has earned some peace from us. Let's let someone else take up the task for a while. _

_As always, my heartfelt thanks goes out to my most recent reviewers, **Last-Catastrophe,**_ _**vapid****dreamscape, Maraudercat** and** KTstoriesandstuff**_**. **_And of course, thank you to those who reviewed other chapters and who followed the story along the way. __Your encouragement inspired every new update_!

_And so, thanks for sticking with me and this story from start to finish, and enjoy the epilogue!_

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Epilogue: Infinity

Infinity. It's the word we use to describe something without limit. Something that continues forever.

How many times have I heard children, at play back in our district, trying to top each other's claims with "Yes, times _infinity!_"—which, in any exchange between children, is the trump card that _always_ wins. My nieces and nephews do it all the time. They think that infinity is an actual number, but it really isn't; at least not in the normal, finite sense that six and thirty-seven and 3.14 are. Because infinity is boundless.

The symbol looks so deceptively simple. Around and back, and around _again_ and back _again_.

I think I come to understand infinity more every day.

Infinite is my guilt at having betrayed her. I made a promise to Wiress as she'd cried on my shoulder following the Quarter Quell announcement. I'd promised first that I'd never leave her side, then later still I brazenly added that not only would I protect her; I'd bring her home safe, because Plutarch Heavensbee's daring plan gave me just the tools I needed to ensure the one thing I wanted most in the world would happen—that she'd be safe. It's all very nice for the rebels and District 13 that the Mockingjay is alive and safe and working for them, but what _really_ drove me to play my part in the rebellion was my desperate need to honor the promise I'd made Wiress, because a promise made to someone you love is sacred. Just like how I'd promised her all those years ago, when she came home from her Games, broken and scared, that I'd never let the Capitol hurt her again. Just like how I'd vowed on our wedding day that I'd always take care of her. I'm ashamed to say that I broke those promises, and now I've broken another. No wonder she was so hesitant about marrying me, about promising herself to me. I'll never forgive myself for betraying her trust.

I'm eager to do whatever I can to help the rebels, and I throw myself headfirst into the rebellion because there's nothing else left for me. Now that they've taken her from me, I have nothing more to lose, and this thought makes me want to do something reckless and daring. I'm no fool; I know I'm not cut out for combat, like Katniss and Gale and the others, but I can use what skills I have to infiltrate even deeper into the Capitol than even they can. By tapping into their television network, I can break into every living room in Panem. Into President Snow's own bedroom, even, which feels both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. What soldier can say they've broken so far into enemy territory? It's not like I'm completely out of danger here in Special Defense. Who's to say that, once combat begins, the Capitol won't send a unit of Peacekeepers over here to slaughter those in Thirteen who remain behind? Who's to say they won't drag me from my workstation and ship me off to the Capitol so Snow can personally witness the execution of the one who'd _really_ destroyed the Quarter Quell arena and spread subversive propaganda all over the country by overriding the Capitol's own broadcasts? And yet, when this dark thought crosses my mind, the only thought I can follow it up with is that this fate—ignominy, torture and death—would only bring me one step closer to Wiress, save the thousand or so times she visits me in my dreams and I cry out her name in my sleep.

I don't know why I dream of her. Everything I've ever learned tells me that death is the end; that when that cannon sounded, Wiress simply ceased to exist. This fills me with a profound sadness I can't even begin to describe, because a world with no Wiress is like a world with no color. And yet, I still can't quite wrap my mind around it. While my head tells me very matter-of-factly that she's _gone_, my heart inexplicably tells me that she's waiting for me somewhere, and I cling to this like a drowning man because hope is the one thing that can keep me moving forward. I _have_ to keep moving forward, because staying put is too painful and looking backward, to a time when she was still here beside me, is unbearable. There is still work to be done, and giving in to despair is not work. It's force without motion. Wiress once told me that.

Perhaps, then, she's a _part_ of infinity now—without bounds. Maybe _that's_ why I see her every night, because even now that she's been set free of everything that had held her back and pushed her down in life, she is still fulfilling _her_ promise not to abandon me. She's honoring the vows it took me years to persuade her to make. This fills me with shame—I couldn't keep my promise, but she refuses to let even death stop her from keeping hers. She's an infinitely better person than I am.

Maybe, having become part of the infinite, now she understands what I could never really get across sufficiently in words—that I need her every bit as much as she needed me, and that although everyone thought _she_ was the fragile one, I wonder whether she could possibly feel any more bereft than I do now that she's gone. When I was hurt in the arena, she refused to give up and say goodbye. She's _that_ strong. I didn't get to say a real goodbye to her, either, but if I'd had the chance, I don't know if I would have been strong enough to face it.

How do you say goodbye to the love of your life? Do I thank her for all she's done to make me happy for all the years we've been together, whether she knew it at the time or not? Do I tell her how much I'll miss her? Do I break down and beg her not to leave me so soon, that I'm not ready to face life without her? Should I apologize for not being able to save her in the end, like I'd always said I would? She'd probably shake her head and say that I'd _already_ saved her, long ago; that every day I saved her a little more, because she said things like that every now and then. But if I were to talk to her one last time, I'm sure I'd want to come clean and beg her forgiveness for my failure anyway, even if it did nothing to bring her back or to alleviate my guilt and pain. At least I'd get it off my chest and the world would know how I'd let her down.

Maybe I wouldn't say anything at all. For some moments, words do not suffice. Words are finite. Words and phrases and sentences—they are all punctuated with a clear-cut ending. They would not be enough to express my love for her, which _has_ no ending. Maybe then, if I could have said goodbye, all I'd do is hold her hand and stroke her beautiful dark hair—she always liked it when I'd do that—and simply _be there_, in her presence, by her side for one last time. I can't think of anything else that would be enough, because logic tells me that you can't use the finite to express that which is infinite.

Infinity. It's how long I'll love her.

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Aaaand...fin!_ Well, I just want to dry my tears and thank you all one last time for following this story from beginning to end, and ask you one last time to review and let me know your final thoughts on the grand finale and on the story overall. I'd said at the beginning that I'd wanted to write a happy story, but I didn't entirely accomplish that, as many parts are pretty sad. But I feel like I've written the story that was asking to be told...does that make sense? Sometimes stories take on a life of their own. I feel like this particular story took on not just a life of its own, but a bit of my life as well, because a good part of it draws from personal experiences. No, I've never fought in the Hunger Games, but bits of the characters and their experiences are drawn in part from not only my own life, but those of people I've known. And of course, some little trifles (like Wiress' measurements) are just little similarities. Art imitates life; life imitates art. _

_Anyway, thanks again for reading and I hoped you enjoyed it. For the last time on this story, at least, I must ask you again—review! I know I didn't get a chance to reply to last chapter's reviewers like I'd wanted to, but I was eager to get you your last update. So please give me your thoughts on this last chapter and I promise I'll get back to each of you ASAP._

_Until next time, then,_

_Delilah_


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